IT will readily appear, that both these violences offered to Nature in the substituting the men-midwives to the females, and dry-nurses to wet-ones, acknowledge exactly the same common parent, interest, and have exactly the same common effect, the destruction of infants. Is it then possible to be too much on one’s guard against those so flagrant impositions, which are the offspring of that proof-hardened passion? Is any thing sacred from it, since the lives of innocents palpably have not been so, in one branch of practice, nor very presumably are one jot more respected in the other? It is true indeed, that the practice of employing dry-nurses has not yet ascended much among the great and rich; first, because fashions rarely do ascend from the lower classes of life, and next, because there is no such temptation of actual lucre to defend or spread it: but as to that of preferring men-midwives, nothing is so likely as its descending, as it is so much the nature of fashion to descend, and none are more readily adopted by the lower ranks of people from the higher ones, than those fashions which are the most foolish and the most pernicious. And certainly this is not the one that the least deserves those epithets. WAS it not for this influence of the fashion, in making the most unreasonable as well as the most dangerous things pass into practice from the highest down to the lowest life, many an honest man might escape the bad consequences of his following the example of those, than whom none are so liable to be imposed on in such matters, the great and the opulent. These make it worth the while of interested persons to deceive them, and thus often for being cheated, pay with their money, their health, and even with their lives. In the mean time, many who are seduced by the vogue in which they see the men-midwives, employ them on a principle which cannot be enough commended, their natural affection to their wives and children. The reasoning which occurs to a husband in middling or low life on this occasion is probably as follows. “My wife and child are full as dear to me as those of the greatest man in the kingdom are to him, and shall I grudge a little more expence in the provision for their greater _safety_?” So far he reasons right: all his mistake lies in taking too readily for granted, that same _greater safety_, to be on the side of the men-practitioners in preference to the midwives, because the former are employed by the great, who, by the by, consult Nature the least of any class of life, even in points of their own health. And certainly in many respects to that _sine-quo-non_ of human happiness, the great had better follow the example even of the poor, than the poor theirs. Make the most then of your reasoning from the prevalence of fashion, the gout and the men-midwives, well considered, are no very enviable appendixes of high-life.