52 
EXTRACTS—DIFFICULT PARTURITION. 
or on its malformation. In human medicine, the art of mid¬ 
wifery is treated of at proper length, and particulars of the 
smallest importance are minutely detailed; while in numerous 
works every desirable information is given with regard to this 
essentia] part of surgical treatment. In veterinary medicine it 
is not so, and scarcely one of our best authors has devoted a 
dozen pages to it, while many scores are wasted on mere gene¬ 
ralities; and the student who could have recollected that which 
he had seen at his school, but has only an indistinct remembrance 
of what is so lightly passed over, is often placed in a situation 
of much embarrassment, and has the mortification to see the 
unlettered practitioner of the village consulted and employed, 
while he is rarely employed ; or when he is called in, he has 
as little confidence reposed in him as, unfortunately, he is 
enabled to repose in himself. 
Being placed in a breeding country, and having met with 
various cases more or less difficult, I would beg to relate a few 
of them. They may be useful to others, and they may lead to a 
different and a better mode of instructing the pupil. 
I will first refer to the presentation of the two anterior mem¬ 
bers of the foetus, and the impossibility of raising the head 
and placing it in the natural position. We are then obliged, in 
order to save the mother, violently to pull at these limbs until 
we see the shoulders and the neck appearing in a mass, while 
the head of the foetus is bent back and impacted in the flank. 
This position often depends on an unnatural formation of the 
foetus, the neck being turned backwards, and the head convex 
on one side, and flattened or even convex on the other. If, 
after the birth, we endeavour to place the head in its natural posi¬ 
tion, we shall see it turn again upon the flank, and rest closely 
upon it. M. Delafoi, sen., advises to pass a cord round the 
curve which is formed by this unnatural position of the head, and 
as near to the head as possible, and to give it to the assistants 
to pull, while he thrusts back the chest into the womb ; and 
thus the head is occasionally brought out, and the birth effected. 
When I have been enabled to reach it, 1 have passed the cord 
around the lower jaw. When I have been unable to accomplish 
this, I have taken an iron instrument, two feet in length, having a 
ring at one end and a blunt hook at the other. I have implanted 
the hook in the palate if I could, or, if not, in one of the orbits, 
and I have kept it fixed there with my hand, while an assistant 
has forcibly pulled a rope attached to the ring, and the curve 
has unbent itself, and the head has been drawn out. I have 
thus saved many calves and colts, and even without essentially , 
injuring the organs to which the hook was applied. These 
