theirs, of the necessity of employing instruments, I reserve to treat of it at large in its place in my second part. HERE I shall only request the reader to remember, what has been said of the indecent, superficial, and even cruel method of training up pupils in this upstart profession. But if I was to add here my having been credibly informed, that there are novices who watch the distresses of poor pregnant women, even in private lodgings, where, under a notion of learning the business, they make those poor wretches, hired for their purpose, undergo the most inhuman vexation, in a condition so fit to inspire compassion, and where those scenes must be rather a school of brutality than of art: if I was to urge, what from the great probability of the thing I firmly believe, that more than one unhappy creature has fallen a victim to the rudiments of these novices; that especially not long ago, one of them in a hurry and confusion of presumption and ignorance, instead of the after-birth from a woman, tore away, by mistake, her womb itself, which occasioned, of all necessity, the poor creature’s dying in unutterable agonies of torture: if I was yet to go farther and assert, that even not one of the least eminent men-midwives pulled off the arms of a child in his attempt to extract it, and very gravely laid them upon the table; what would be replied to me? It would be said I had invented these horrors, or forged such raw-head and bloody-bones stories, purely in favour of my own cause. And to this objection, while I produce no proof, and for my producing no proof other reasons may be obviously assigned, besides that of those cases being non-existent, some of which I am very certain are true, and firmly believe all the rest; to this objection then I say, I make no reply. The reader, who will have considered this matter, may easily decide within himself the degree of probability in such allegations. But what objection will stand good against authorities of reasonings and facts, produced from the writings of the _men-midwives_ themselves? Will they be suspected of partiality or aggravation of things against themselves? I SHALL here select one of perhaps the most excusable examples from the circumstances accompanying it, or it would probably not have been produced by the author a man-midwife, to shew, by the confession of the men-midwives themselves, the insufficiency of their discernment, whether a child is dead or not.