In fine, your _famous Fraternities_ being universally celebrated for encouraging of _Learning_ and promoting _Ingenuity_, You are still the more highly entitled to my _Endeavours_ in both respects; and I my self in all points of _Humanity_ the more secure of your candid _Interpretation_. The _undertaking_ then being yours by _Birth_, it has a Natural Claim to your _Care_; And it being the _Duty_ of Men to provide for their _Off-Spring_, it has a peculiar Right to your _Patronage_. Wherefore, with all due _Deference_ and becoming _Submission_ to your _wiser Judgments_, I lay the DEDICATION as well as the WORK it self entirely at your Feet, in Hopes of your courteous _Reception_ and benign _Tutelage_ both at Home and Abroad: Upon which (in short) I beg Leave to Subscribe my self, with profound _Veneration_, _Your Eminent_ SOCIETIES, Most Faithful, and Most Obedient, Servant _John Maubray_. [Illustration] THE PREFACE TO THE READER. As the Study of _Physick_ has differ’d in every Age, according to the prevailing Opinions and Ambiguous Determinations of _Philosophers_, so the Practice of _Midwifery_ has also varied, according to the Judicious Experiments and successful Operations of _Professors_; until of late Years, by the many happy Discoveries and strict Inquiries made into the Secrets of Nature, and Natural Causes, these Healing and obstetricious _Arts_ are so much improv’d and advanc’d, that, they now seem to be arriv’d at their very Height of _Perfection_: Insomuch that both the _one_ and the _other_ stand this Day upon as sure a Foundation, and as certain Principles, as most other _Sciences_ do, which notwithstanding are not exempted from the Fate of _Casualties_. THE Case then being so, it becomes all Men of Ingenuity and Integrity, to be also _Communicative_ of such Things, as may tend to the Welfare of their Neighbours and to the Common Good of Mankind; since according to the Excellent _Poet_, _Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc, sciat alter._ THIS was the Principle of the _Ancients_, who, as they discover’d the Natural Debility of the _Female Sex_, and that Women were not only Subject to all Diseases in common with Men, but also obnoxious to a vast many Distempers peculiarly singular to themselves, were first mov’d to write particular _Books_, and respective _Treatises_, upon these Heads: The most wise and divine _Hippocrates_, first breaking the Ice, after him _Diocles_, next _Aetius_, and at last many _others_; For the more Learned and Ingenious that any one found himself in his respective Age, the more readily he exercis’d himself in these difficult Points.