Hull_, well known for his controversial zeal on these subjects, has offered some remarks so judicious and important, that it would be an act of injustice to withhold them from the reader. “The propriety of inducing premature labour,” says he, “in any deformed woman, can rarely, if ever, be determined upon before the crotchet has been found indispensably necessary, and actually employed in a previous labour; indeed, unless the contraction of the tube or canal of the pelvis be very considerable and pretty accurately ascertained, it will scarcely be justifiable in any case to have recourse to this practice in all the subsequent pregnancies, until the woman has been delivered a second, or third time, by the crotchet; for it has happened in a very great number of instances, that a woman who has been delivered of her first child by the perforator and crotchet, has been afterwards delivered of one or more living children, at the full time; this observation is made not to discountenance the inducing of premature labour, but to prevent the abuse of it.” _Dr. Merriman_, whose extensive practice, and generally acknowledged judgment, stamp a peculiar value upon his opinions, has also pointed out the limitations and cautions which he deems necessary to be observed, to render this operation safe and eligible,[448] and he concludes by observing that “_a regard to his own character should determine the accoucheur, not to perform this operation, unless some other respectable practitioner has seen the patient, and has acknowledged that the operation is advisable_.” Q. 12. _What circumstances will justify the Cesarean Operation, and of what value is the section of the Symphysis Pubis, or Sigaultian operation?_ Where the size of the pelvis[449] will not admit the passage of the child, surgical aid is indispensably necessary; but, says _Dr. Merriman_,[450] it becomes every man to set out with a determination that he will not hastily, nor without due cause, have recourse to instrumental assistance;[451] for he may assure himself that if he were easily to yield to his own apprehensions, or to the expressions of alarm by the attendants in the lying-in chamber, and in consequence were to try to expedite the delivery by his instruments, he would, on very many occasions, do irreparable injury to the parent or her child. Instrumental delivery resolves itself into three classes,— 1. _Where neither the mother nor the child is of necessity injured_, as by the use of the FORCEPS[452] and LEVER.[453] 2. _Where the mutilation of the child is the principal object_, as by the PERFORATOR and CROTCHET. 3. _Where the mother is wounded_, as in the CÆSAREAN and SIGAULTIAN operations. It is of the latter class we have now to speak. _Of the Cæsarean Operation_: