MIDWIFERY. 
ficc is not large enough to admit of more 
than a single finger ; while in every such 
attempt, provided the uterus be rigid and un- 
pliahle, instead of facilitating the enlarge- 
ment, the practitioner will considerably ob- 
struct it, his perpetual stimulus continually 
thickening and indurating the edges of the 
orifice. 
Yet delivery by the feet appears by no 
means to have been approved by the pro- 
fession in genei al. Celsus, tliongh an admi- 
rably well informed man, and an excellent 
writer, was not of the profession, while 
Galen, who w-as of it, condemned the prac- 
tice as decidedly as Hippocrates. In reality 
we meet with the same kind of general 
condemnation as late as to the middle of 
the seventeenth century; for Riverius cen- 
sured it publicly in 1657, and though Mau- 
riceau inclined to it in his own practice, as 
he informs us in his “ Treatise on Mid- 
wifery,” published in 1664, he tells us at 
the same time, that many authors were of 
opinion, that in all foot-cases it would be 
better to attempt to turn the child than to 
deliver with such a presentation. So slow 
is the world to shake off a prejudice of any 
kind, when once deeply rooted, however 
unfotmded or even fatal. 
About this (leriod several tracts or trea- 
tises on midwifery in Great Britain, issued 
from the pens of Wharton, fiharleton, 
Mayow, and Raynold, of all which the last 
appears to have been the most celebrated 
writer. To the instrument called the 
crotchet, which had long been in use, but 
most commonly for removing the mangled 
limbs x)f the child, whom it was thought ne- 
cessary to destroy, we now find added, 
generally supposed to have been an inven- 
tion of Chamberlen, a forceps of a peculiar 
kind, having a near resemblance to what is 
now denominated a vectis. The employ- 
ment of male practitioners grew common, 
books of real science, and containing infor- 
mation of the most valuable description, 
issued freely from the press, and especially 
from the labours of Chamberlen, \\ illoiighby, 
Bramber, and Simpson ; lectures of repu- 
tation upon the subject of midwifery were 
instituted, and largely attended, a variety 
of ingenious instruments were devised and 
multiplied, and the first public description 
of the modern forceps was given by Chap- 
man, the second public teacher of mid- 
w'ifery in London, which made its appear- 
ance in the third volume of the Edinburgh 
Medical Essays. It is useless to pursue 
this narrative any fartlier : the names of 
Smellie, Hamilton, Orme, and Denman, 
are known to every one ; and their instruc- 
tions have been widely felt, and duly appre- 
ciated, not only by the profession but by the 
world at large. 
DISEASES OF TIIE FEMALE SEXUAL SYS- 
TEM. 
From a cause that has never yet been ex- 
plained, women, on the commencement of 
puberty, throw forth, at monthly intervals, 
a peculiar and coloured fluid from the 
uterus ; which terms of discharge only cease, 
or only should cease, during pregnanev, and 
lactation, till the age of about forty-five in 
this country and others of a similar warmth, 
though the age at which it ceases is much 
earlier in countries of greater heat, and 
where the general forms acquires a much 
earlier maturity. At the commencement 
of this natural or regular flow, which is 
usually denominated menses or menstruation, 
women are often subject to many diseases 
from the change that takes place in the 
constitution at that period. They are sub- 
ject to other diseases from a morbid sup- 
pression, or too large or too frequent an 
evacuation of this discharge ; and again to 
others, at the period of its final cessation. 
We shall first examine into the nature of 
the menstrual fluid itself. It was formerly 
supposed that this fluid was a kind of sur- 
plus blood thrown out of the system from 
the mouths of minute veins. It has been 
clearly ascertained, however, by Dr. W. 
Hunter, that this fluid, whatever it be, is 
thrown from the mouths, not of the uterine 
veins, but the uterine arteries ; and that 
instead of being blood, it has scarcely any 
• one property in common with blood, except- 
ing indeed in its colour. Generally speak- 
ing, the average time the discharge conti- 
nues is three or four days ; and as to the pro- 
portional quantity lost on each day, on the 
first and fourth, or on the third day, the wo- 
man loses a fourth of the whole quantity each 
day, and, on the middle day, about the other 
half. The quantity lost will generally be 
three or four ounces altogether, a single 
ounce on the first day, two on the second, 
and the fourth and last ounce on the third 
day. There is nothing, however, more af- 
fected by the climate than this : in a warm 
climate the quantity being increased, while 
it is diininisiied in cold ones. Liunmus, 
while writing his account of Lapland, says, 
that the quantity lost there is never above 
half an ounce or an ounce. In hot islands, 
as in titose of the Archipelago, Hippocrate* 
