BUT perhaps I exaggerate. Let the reader judge for himself, and pronounce as his own reason shall dictate to him. Let him if he can read without shuddering, the following quotation from one of the most celebrated _men_-midwives of the age, Levret, p. 199. “Mauriceau had invented a new _tire-tête_, which was to be introduced into that part (the uterus). Peu or Pugh, like _many_ others, made use of different hooks (_crochets_) and La Motte opening the head with scissors, scooped out the brain, &c. We read, with horror, in _all_ these authors, that they have extracted children, who, tho’ much _maimed_ or _mutilated_, have yet _lived_ several hours.” UPON this many reflections will naturally occur. These children thus destroyed, owed most probably their death neither to nature, nor to the difficulties of the passage through which the launch is made into our world, but to the labor being prematurely forced, and the delivery effectuated by those torturous instruments, which at once kill the child, and not seldom irreparably wound the mother in the tender contexture of these parts. A midwife, with less learning and more patience than those gentlemen, and well acquainted with the power and custom of Nature to operate in some subjects, sometimes more slowly, and in all ever more safely and gently than art, would have left to nature, not without her tenderest assistance of that nature, the expulsion of the child. A proper predisposal of the passage, and direction of the posture, with an unremitting attention to employ the fingers, so as not to lapse the critical moment of operation, often never to be recovered with safety to mother and child, would have, I repeat it, and appeal to common sense for the probability thereof, saved the lives of those innocents, which thus fell the victims of those _learned_ experiments, with instruments, which, by the way, be it remarked, none are so forward to use, as those who are the loudest in exclaiming against the employ of them. And reason good, if they exclaim against them, it is evidently in order to cover their practice with them, against which the minds of their patients must so naturally be revolted. But that exclaiming does not evidently hinder their being used, when, the truth is, that if due care was previously taken with the patients, those execrable substitutes to the fingers need never be used at all.