Had the Greeks and Romans a forceps for extracting the child alive? Probably not. We have no mention of any such instrument by Soranus or Paul, both accomplished obstetricians, nor can any description of such an instrument be found in the voluminous pseudo-Hippocratic works on women. Adams, in a note to Paul, III. lxxvi, says that though the Roman and Greek writers do not mention the forceps, Avicenna does so, and he says that a forceps was dug up in the house of an obstetrix at Pompeii bearing a considerable resemblance to the modern forceps. The only passage I have met with in the slightest degree supporting the notion that the ancients ever delivered the child alive with instruments is one in the pseudo-Hippocratic treatise _De Superfoetatione_, where we are told that: 'If the woman has a difficult labour, and the child delay long in the passage and be born not easily but with difficulty and with the mechanical aids (μηχαναῖς) of the physician, such children are of weak vitality, and the umbilical cord should not be cut till they make water or sneeze or cry' (i. 465). We are not entitled to translate μηχαναῖς by 'instruments', because it may mean any mechanical aid such as a fillet, or even assistance with the fingers of the accoucheur; but, even granting that it refers to instruments, it might mean no more than, e. g., the embryo hooks already described. With them, terrible as they were, the child must frequently have been born alive, though mutilated. A child would have had a far better chance of being born alive with them than with the murderously toothed forceps of Albucasis (Pl. XLI, figs. 3, 4), with which probably no child could have been born alive. As regards the statement that Avicenna knew of the forceps, his directions are that the fillet is to be applied, and, if that fail, the forceps is to be put on and the child extracted with it. If that fail, the child is to be extracted by incision, as in the case of a dead foetus. This passage, says Adams, puts it beyond doubt that the Arabians were acquainted with the method of extracting the child alive with the forceps. This is, however, not quite correct. A full consideration of Avicenna's words seems to me to lead to the conclusion that he is describing no more than extraction with a craniotomy forceps. If the forceps fail the child is to be extracted by incision, as in the case of a foetus already dead (and decomposed so that the forceps would not hold). As regards Adams' statement that a forceps like ours was dug up in Pompeii one may ask, 'Where is that forceps now?' It is certainly not in the Naples Museum, where all the finds from Herculaneum and Pompeii have been stored since the excavations were commenced. Adams has probably been misled by some notice of the 'Pompeian forceps' (Pl. XLIII), which many consider adapted for removing the cranial bones when the child's head is broken up in cephalotripsy. It is, however, a sequestrum forceps.