IV. THEY who leave all these Things to mere NATURE, risque their PATIENT’S future _Welfare_, and very often her _Life_ too, as innumerable _Tragical Examples_ witness: For NATURE itself most particularly requires our special _Assistance_ in this _Case_. But (according to their indifferent _Notions_) it is _Time_ enough to assist NATURE, when it is found _Deficient_; and then, in _Case_ of EXTREMITY, they unanimously agree that there is no other way to help or save the _Woman’s_ LIFE, but by this METHOD of _Manual Operation_. To which I answer, that NATURE operates not in an _Instant_, but (in all _Cases_) requires a competent _Time_, to discharge its respective _Functions_; and being left too long to itself, for want of Help, is many a-time (by intervening _Accidents_) found at last _Incapable_: Upon which, then _They_, beginning their Endeavours to _second it_, generally come too late. For if the _Case_ does not prove to be past all _Remedy_, it is at least (by this _Protraction of Time_) often rendred not only _difficult_, but also _desperate_; as will evidently appear in the _Case in hand_, from what follows, _viz._
I. WHILE _They_ (conformable to the general and universal _Practice_ of common _MIDWIVES_) expect the _Performance_ of NATURE, or the _Success_ of their _trifling Means_, in the mean time, the _Orifice_ of the WOMB is so _closely shut up_, that in the space of an Hour or two, it cannot be _penetrated_, without renovating the most severe racking PAINS to the _Woman_, who (perhaps) has been sufficiently spent before, by the DELIVERY of her INFANT, and is _now_ consequently incapable of standing out the renew’d PANGS: whereby of course _She_ must succumb at last, and _give up_ the _Ghost_, for want of _Timely Help_; as innumerable _Instances_ confirm for an undeniable Truth. But,
II. SUPPOSING the _Woman_ to be able to undergo the _PAINS_, yet the WOMB is however contracted, and the _SECUNDINE_ bound so close up, that this _Body_, which before adher’d _Cake-ways_ to its _Bottom_ in a _smooth_ and _broad Form_, is now so squeez’d into a _small_ and _long Figure_, that it is even now a _Difficulty_ next to Impossible, to reach the _Bottom_ of the WOMB, and still a _harder Task_ to extract an entire _Secundine_, without prejudicing the WOMB.