expressly says, “that a sudden unexpected death of his patient was one of those FATALITIES, that not all the human prudence can prevent.” BUT that I may not here incur the least charge of unfairness, as if I meant by this quotation any thing so absurd or unjust, as that in the labors of pregnant women, as well as in other diseases unconnected with them, there may not sometimes happen accidents impossible to be foreseen, as well under the care of the best physician, called in by the very best midwife, as under the most ignorant assuming man-midwife, I shall here introduce another quotation from the same _Levret_, that will especially shew the ladies, and all parties concerned, to what an imaginary safety, so much, and even the very point sought for, is sacrificed as is sacrificed, in preferring the men-practitioners to the midwives. [8] “M. de la Motte says, that for the fifth time he laid the wife of a glover of Valogne, the 16th of March, 1704; that the woman was but an hour in her labor-pains, and that he delivered her with all the facility imaginable; that he left her upon the couch till he had given her some broth, after which he recommended her to the care of the nurse, and went _where his business called him_. He adds, that he had time but just to bleed two persons in the neighbourhood, before he was fetched away in haste to see the patient he had just laid, whom he found _dead_ upon the bed. The cause of this _death_ was instantly manifest to him from the stream of _blood_, which ran about the floor, and even penetrated to the apartment beneath, after soaking through the bed itself, in which there remained clots of blood of an extraordinary size. “THIS author adds, in the reflexions at the end of this observation, that this delivery had been both more easy and more expeditious than any this woman had precedently had: and he notes, that these _melancholic accidents_ are not _without example_, since such ladies as the princess of ... and madam la Presidente de —— with _numbers_ of _others_, have, on the like occasion, undergone the same _fate_, as her he here treats of. These are, according to him, _proofs_ that all human science and dexterity _often_ cannot prevent the _like misfortunes_, since these _great ladies_ had been lain by the most _celebrated men-midwives_.” NOW I might here, without much probability of being contradicted, aver, that where such accidents, said to happen so _frequently_ and inevitably, should happen under the hands of midwives, there would be but one voice among the men-practitioners and their credulous adherents, to impute them to the ignorance and malpractice of the women. The plea of _occult causes_ would be hooted at in them, tho’ receivable, it seems, from the men.