ficult occasions ; and justice requires us to acknowledge, that they often happily terminated labours which women could not manage, especially after the forceps were made public, in the year 1733.
   This extraordinary male aid caused the less modest females to engage men to deliver them in common labours, notwithstanding their friends' remonstrances ; but men being awkward herein, they went to Paris to study their business, under men who taught it there about half a century ago.
   Great mischief, however, has been done since men-midwifery become general, owing to the ignorance and impatience of those professors who erroneously imagined, their instruments must be used on all occasions, whether the labours were natural or difficult, which I shall hereafter prove.
   About a century ago, an instrument was invented in Holland, for the pur-