They cannot but discern that the persons most competent to administer encouragement, are those to whose management their health is entrusted; and upon their accoucheur it unequivocally devolves not only to assist in the moments of child-birth, but to use every precaution to conduct to that period in safety. Timidity and apprehension often modify the nature of child-birth, without any extraordinary occurrence. Instances of predicted death, and predicted suffering, have been fully authenticated; and those, who have attributed the prescience to supernatural agency, have been misled. Persons who die at a predicted time, die not in consequence of the thing portended:―if the prediction rest upon some imaginary omen, or unwarrantable timidity, death is the punishment of their superstition, or their fears. Sympathetic sorrow and fear must be distinguished. Who would interdict at the present a moderate indulgence in the former? but, for inordinate fear, this fatal instance of child-birth does not supply the least well-grounded occasion. It cannot, however, be averted, that females thus delicately situated, will be the subject of needless apprehension, and may become enslaved by unwarrantable anxiety and terror; and which it is the duty, and will I am persuaded, be within the power, of a conscientious man, nearly, if not wholly, to suppress. It would be a dereliction from my present feelings, nor do I think it incompatible with the design, to ask, if practitioners in Midwifery, and of Medical Science in general, in their attachment to the custom of administering drugs, and in their repugnance to a species of fanatical empiricism, do not too much disregard the _moral treatment_ of disease? Let it not be supposed that I would question the efficacy of Medicine, or that I would tolerate the chicanery or chimeras of _Tractorism_ or _Magnetism_; for though it would be well if the articles of our Materia Medica were reduced to at least one twentieth of their present number, I cannot hesitate to aver, that some drugs are capable of acting specifically on the animal frame. Must it not also be admitted, that although, upon every genuine principle of philanthropy, we would sweep imposture “with the besom of destruction,” the audacious empiric has produced effects well adapted to astonish the vulgar, and to claim for himself a large portion of ephemeral reputation? The scientific mind ought to appreciate the influence which one human being is capable of exerting over another; and by reflecting on it, the most available line of conduct in the removal of disease will be discovered. It is true, artifice has often taken precedence of merit. Attractive as popularity undeniably is, the practitioner who solicits the aid of artifice to rise into notice, not only forfeits his character, but hazards the sacrifice of future professional honor and success, on the altar of a most precarious goddess:― “To seek honor, is to lose liberty.”