Take oil of keir two ounces, juice of savin an ounce, of leeks and mercury each half an ounce; boil them to the consumption of the juice; add galbanum dissolved in vinegar half an ounce; myrrh two drachms, storax liquid a drachm; round bistort, sowbread, cinnamon, saffron a drachm; with wax make an ointment, and apply it. If the birth be retarded through the weakness of the mother, refresh her by applying wine and soap to the nose; confect. alkermas diamarg. These things may be applied to help nature in her delivery, when the child comes to the birth the right way, and yet the birth be retarded: but if she finds the child comes the wrong way, and is not able to deliver the woman as she ought to be, by helping nature, and saving both mother and child (for it is not enough to lay a woman, if it might be done any other way with more safety and ease, and less hazard both to woman and child), then let her send speedily for better and more able help; and not as I once knew a midwife do, who, when a woman she was to deliver had hard labour, rather than a man-midwife should be sent for, undertook to deliver the woman herself (though told it was a man’s business), and in her attempting it brought away the child but left the head in the mother’s womb; and had not a man-midwife been presently sent for, the mother had lost her life as well as the child: such persons may rather be termed butchers than midwives. But supposing the woman’s labour be natural, I will next show what the midwife ought to do, in order to her delivery. CHAPTER V. OF NATURAL LABOUR; WHAT IT IS; AND WHAT THE MIDWIFE IS TO DO IN SUCH A LABOUR. SECT. I. _What Natural Labour is._ There are four things which denominate a woman’s natural labour; the first, that it be at the full time; for, if a woman comes before her time, it cannot be termed natural labour; neither will it be easy as though she had completed her nine months. The second thing is, that it be speedy and without any ill accident: for, when the time of her birth is come, nature is not dilatory in the bringing of it forth, without some ill accident intervene which renders it unnatural. The third is, that the child be alive; for all will grant that the being delivered of a dead child is very unnatural. The fourth thing requisite to a natural birth is, that the child come right: for if the position of the child in the womb be contrary to what is natural, the event will prove it so, by making that which should be a time of life, the death of both the mother and the child.