Persons whose minds have been little cultivated, are apt to seek undue commendation, and to gain by improper means the confidence of their employer. However well disposed and well informed the lady, perhaps her knowledge of parturition may be circumscribed by her personal experience. But the nurse is supposed to have gained much knowledge, beyond the immediate obligations of her own station, by her intercourse with medical practitioners. She thinks herself competent to the comparison of the different methods of management which may consist in mere circumstantial differences, but which by her are made important. She thinks herself competent to change diet, to administer medicine, to regulate the time of rising and sitting up, in the absence of the practitioner, and often even contrary to his orders. Because they have seen spirituous liquor given in some cases without actual injury, they think it may be given in all; and it is often only by a positive injunction this can be counteracted. They propagate unnecessary follies respecting the peculiar dangers of certain days. And if the patient be dejected, they rally them, and often urge the necessity of premature rising to dinner or tea, to promote cheerfulness. Within the last few weeks, though spirits had been decidedly prohibited in a case of first parturition, as soon as the practitioner had left, the nurse so boldly urged some brandy, that the lady could not refuse compliance. The obtrusiveness and loquacity of this person very materially affected the recovery of an interesting woman. We express ourselves strongly and decidedly on this point, because we pity a delicate inexperienced female, who happens at so critical a moment to be managed by an ignorant or obtrusive nurse; and because we have no question that most of the evils which spring up subsequently to parturition, arise from the contravention of proper orders, either respecting quietude or diet. During the first few days or week in all cases the entire regulation of even minute particulars should be under the direction of the medical attendant; and in some cases this attention must be carried farther. It must not be tolerated that a woman who shall have had the longest experience, and who may even be able to detect striking differences, should prescribe either counter to established regulations, or when medical advice is accessible. There certainly are instances of sudden transition, in which the nurse must act according to her best judgment, and in which, if wrong, she is not blame-worthy. When on this topic, I cannot totally exonerate the accoucheur from some connivance in the assumed importance of the nurse; and through a want of explicitness and decision, she has often been left either to the selection of her own plans, or plans have been so carelessly or loosely suggested, that it may justly be questioned whether it was intended they should be enforced.