uite delivered, and then the after-burden fetched, to
finish the operation, being careful not to pluck the navel-string too
hard lest it break, as often happens when it is corrupt.

If the dead child comes with the arm up to the shoulders so extremely
swelled that the woman must suffer too great violence to have it put
back, it is then (being first well assured the child is dead) best to
take it off by the shoulder joints, by twisting three or four times
about, which is very easily done by reason of the softness and
tenderness of the body. After the arm is so separated, and no longer
possesses the passage, the operator will have more room to put up his
hand into the womb, to fetch the child by the feet and bring it away.

But although the operator is sure the child is dead in the womb, yet he
must not therefore presently use instruments because they are never to
be used but when hands are not sufficient, and there is no other remedy
to prevent the woman's danger, or to bring forth the child any other
way; and the judicious operator will choose that way which is the least
hazardous, and most safe.

SECT. II.--_How a Woman must be Delivered when the Child's Feet come
first._

There is nothing more obvious to those whose business it is to assist
labouring women, than that the several unnatural postures in which
children present themselves at the birth are the occasions of most of
the bad labours and ill accidents that happen to them in that condition.

And since midwives are often obliged, because of their unnatural
situations, to draw the children forth by the feet, I conceive it to be
most proper first to show how a child must be brought forth that
presents itself in that posture, because it will be a guide to several
of the rest.

I know indeed in this case it is the advice of several authors to change
the figure, and place the head so that it may present to the birth, and
this counsel I should be very much inclined to follow, could they but
also show how it may be done. But it will appear very difficult, if not
impossible to be performed, if we would avoid the danger that by such
violent agitations both the mother and the child must be put into, and
therefore my opinion is, that it is better to draw forth by the feet,
when it presents itself in that posture, than to venture a worse
accident by turning it.

As soon, therefore, as the waters are broken, and it is known that the
child come thus and that the