FOR my part, I dare maintain it, that the surgeons, in form of men-midwives, have been the death of more children, with their _speculum matricis_, their _crotchets_, their _extractors_ or _forceps_, their _tire-têtes_, &c. than they have preserved. If in killing the children, they have saved the lives of some mothers, they have hurt and damaged, not to say murdered, a number of others. Their faults ought to set us upon searching out for a better way of going to work; a more easy, a more safe one. This fatal operation by instruments might even be pronounced absolutely useless in the profession. There is no inveighing severely enough against so dangerous a doctrine as that which recommends them. Even common humanity requires an endeavour to open the eyes of those, who imagine they cannot do better than blindly to assent, in every point, to authors recommendable, it is true, by a number of good things, but whose authenticity in those points procures them but the more dangerously credit in erroneous ones. Good sense does not dictate undistinguishingly receiving all that is advanced even by the best authors. As they may have been themselves deceived, they may also deceive us. The sacrifice of our reason is what we owe to nothing but to revelation. Books written by men have no title to it. As their understanding is not above the impositions of others, or errors of their own, they may adopt falsities, through ignorance, through prejudice, for want of examination, or of right reasoning. Their heart may also have been byassed or corrupted by views of interest or of ambition. I may therefore, without over-presumption aver, that with regard to instruments, it is wrong to lay any stress on the authority of others. For, with all the respect due to some illustrious writers in these modern times, who defend the party opposed to ours, it may be assuredly said, that either they have not known the art of midwifery, or that they have formed their judgment of it by nothing but the abuses of the antients, who practiced it without knowing it. Is it not a crying shame, that operators, who in their life-time massacred such numbers of human creatures, should still retain, after death, credit enough to assassinate common sense? Faith is given to unskilful authors, who have deceived their cotemporaries, posterity, and perhaps themselves: ignorance admires, enthusiasm protects them. But what a cruel and mean policy must be that of supposing, that the knowledge of truth ought not to have a clearer title to dominion than the illusions of imposture? I hope however, that, when the eyes of the public shall, in this point, come to be opened, and opened they will be, if true physicians will give themselves the trouble to enlighten it, that public will at length see, that an approbation, unpreceded by a due examination, does it as little honor as service.