I DO not however charge _all_ the men-midwives with so much modesty, as to confine their striking out of midwifery into physic, to the women lying-in, or to the time of their lying-in, since there have not been wanting some who, with equal ignorance, but superior effrontery, have intrepidly hoisted, the standard of a general knowledge of physic, and having originally insinuated themselves into families in the character of men-midwives, have easily maintained their ground in them afterwards on the foot of physicians. A circumstance not much to be wondered at, considering the endearment of such an office as that of a man-midwife, and the ascendant it must serve to give them over the heads of families, even in points where a midwife can have no shadow of pretention, for interfering. In the mean time, let any one of sense or common humanity consider but the consequences of this dangerous admission of the sufficiency of a man-midwife in those complicated cases, which require the consultation of a regular physician; to say nothing, for the present, of the other objections already mentioned, or which I shall hereafter more at large discuss, and the result must be, to allow that the medical pretentions, or indeed any pretentions, of these men-practitioners, cannot be too much discouraged, nor confidence more misplaced than in them. For once that they may hit the mark by chance, they will often take the part of the distemper instead of that of the patient; they will do what they have only a gross guess of being the right, not what they know to be so: and physic, at best, but a conjectural science, must in them want even the common grounds of conjecture.