YET nothing is more true, nor indeed more likely to be true, than that besides the natural pains of labor not having been obviated by a due preventive method of assuagement; besides their having been unskilfully attended to in the article of the delivery, through the natural unhandiness of the men-midwives, it does not unrarely happen, that their defective practice, not only occasions to the women much greater pains, but even much greater danger than would probably have been the case, I will not say if a midwife, but even if Nature had barely been left to herself, that is to say, if nature had been neither injured by a clumsy aukward attempt to help her, nor injudiciously interrupted, nor prematurely forced or cruelly hurried. The patient is however delivered, and delivered so that, if she was better informed, or less blinded with joy, instead if thanking the operator, to whom she attributes her deliverance, she would have to impute to him all the increase of pain she had unnecessarily suffered, all the increase of danger of which this man so thanked was himself the author. Then it is, that even in a subject so serious, a judicious by-stander might give himself the comedy of observing the airs of consequence, which an operator assumes for a woman under his case _not_ losing the life, of which but for him she would most probably _not_ have been in the least danger. Thus a man, whose all of merit well weighed, is no more than not having been able to consummate the destruction of mother and child, in spite of the kindness of nature, shall for that negative merit be allowed the positive one of having performed wonders of art. Then it is that the mother naturally in a rapture of joy at her deliverance, in which she never remembers but with a gratitude, of which she only mistakes the object, by paying to the operator, what in fact was due to nature; then it is, I say, that the mother, father or parties concerned, for want of making due allowances in a point they are so excusable for not understanding, cordially join the self-applause of the man-midwife. Nor does it unfrequently happen, that one of these instrumentarians, after an operation, for which he deserves the severest censure, and of which, whatever necessity he had to plead was originally owing to his own unskilfulness or omission, shall strut about the room, and florishing his butcher’s _steel_, sing an _Io Peean_ to himself, “_for that his victorious art had saved nature as it were by enchantment_”[11]. Then it is, that in full chorus the deluded parties, in the innocence of their heads and hearts, hold up their hands to heaven, and piously exclaim, “_what a narrow escape the patient had, thanks to the learned Dr. and what a mercy it was she had not been trusted to such an ignorant creature as a midwife must be_.”