that silly credulity, which so often leads men to the swallowing the grossest absurdities. One would think fictions had peculiar charms for them. NOTHING however can be more pitiful, than the injustice of running down a sex, which has, in this very matter of midwifery, served the whole earth through all ages, till just the present one, that a small part of the world, becomes in imagination, all of a sudden a land of Goshen, or the only enlightened spot, and takes the ignis fatuus of a mercenary presumption for the sun-shine of sound reason. But after this injustice, where will the men stop? What profession will they leave to the women? It will at last be discovered, that the men can spin, raise paste, cut out caps, pickle and preserve better than we do. After all, is it not even ridiculous to see a custom, established for above five thousand years, universally approved by great and little, fall into disgrace, I will not say by the opinion, but by the whim of a handful of people, most of whom too are, most probably, perfectly sensible of the nonsense and absurdity of that whim, but defend it from a spirit that can hardly not be suspected of interestedness, which indeed will make men defend any thing? AND after all, even common decency and common gratitude might engage the men-midwives to speak less slightingly of the women of that profession; since of whom is it, that the most famous of our present master-men-midwives of London have learned their science but of the women? Do not even the principal ones of them make it their boast to have served a kind of apprenticeship under those midwives, who had served theirs in the Hôtel Dieu at Paris? BUT surely the reader will not think it here impertinent to observe, that the wise administrators of that famous hospital, would hardly have failed establishing men-midwives in it, if the safety of the subject had had any thing to fear in the hands of women. But women alone it is that preside at all the lyings-in there, be they never so extraordinary or laborious. The men-midwives have never yet been able to extend their footing within that place. Their emissaries can gain no admission, nor are any proficients trained up there but women only. Notwithstanding which, all the women who are there delivered are satisfactorily and skilfully assisted. Vexatious accidents are less frequent there, in proportion to the numbers, than elsewhere, under the eyes and operation of the men-midwives. Mother and child are both more in safety under the hands of those dextrous matrons, than in those of the most renowned men-practitioners[3].