BUT then as this unnatural preference has all the folly and whim of fashion in it, it may be hoped, that it will also have all the instability and transitoriness of one. Time that confirms the dictates of Nature destroys the fictions of opinion. But in points where Nature is herself attacked or injured, inconveniencies and damages never fail of following thereon, enough to oppose the duration of them. The numbers of lying-in women (thanks to beneficent Nature) rather not destroyed than duly assisted by the men-operators, can neither atone for those who perish, sometimes the mother, sometimes the child, sometimes both, while none of them are but sufferers in some degree; nor long blind a public, that has so much interest not to be imposed upon in a matter so essential to it, by false pretences, or by an injurious and interested degradation of the midwives, who at the worst can hardly be so bad as the very best of the men, in the capital point of their business, the manual function. The oftenest greater _danger_, and always the greater _pain_, under men-operators than under the midwives hands will, sooner or later, determine the parties concerned to open their eyes on their greatest interest, in a point of such infinite importance to them. GRANTING then to Fashion all the power it really has, and a greater one it is, than for the honor of human kind, can well be imagined, still, it not only has its limits of extension, but duration. It is only for the truth of Nature to be universal and eternal. FASHION, it is true, may not only govern people in indifferent matters, such as dress, furniture, equipage, or so forth, but even in essential, even in capital ones, such, for example, as is this point of option between the men-operators and the midwives: it may, in short, exert its tyranny in many things, one would rather think left better to the determination of REASON. But then this tyranny cannot well be long-lived. The evils which such a fashion begets destroy at length their own parent. No opinion then, as I have before observed, can be permanent that is not founded on the truth of Nature: but where the consequences of such an opinion are detrimental to the good of society, which is the darling object of Nature; that spirit of self-preservation which she has so manifestly diffused thro’ human kind, will hardly suffer errors pernicious to it long to subsist. There is no fashion can, under such objections, long hold out against victorious Nature, who is sure to revenge the violences offered her. AND here I even officiously seize on an occasion that rises to me out of the very bowels, I may say, of my subject, of selecting for one proof of the danger of adopting innovations offensive to Nature, a point of such near analogy to midwifery, as that of nursing children, the care of whom, next to that of the mothers, is the true midwife’s tender province.