In drawing out a dead child, these directions should be carefully followed by the surgeon, viz.—­If the child be found to be dead, its head appearing first, the delivery will be more difficult; for it is an evident sign that the woman’s strength is beginning to fail her, that, as the child is dead and has no natural power, it cannot be assisting in its own delivery in any way.  Therefore the most certain and the safest way for the surgeon is, to put up his left hand, sliding it into the neck of the womb, and into the lower part of it towards the feet, as hollow in the palm as he can, and then between the head of the infant and the neck of the womb.  Then, having a forceps in the right hand, slip it up above the left hand, between the head of the child and the flat of the hand, fixing it in the bars of the temple near the eye.  As these cannot be got at easily in the occipital bone, be careful still to keep the hand in its place, and gently move the head with it, and so with the right hand and the forceps draw the child forward, and urge the woman to exert all her strength, and continue drawing whenever her pains come on.  When the head is drawn out, he must immediately slip his hand under the child’s armpits, and take it quite out, and give the woman a piece of toasted white bread, in a quarter of a pint of Hippocras wine.

If the former application fails let the woman take the following potion hot when she is in bed, and remain quiet until she begins to feel it operating.

Take seven blue figs, cut them into pieces and add five grains each of fenugreek, motherwort and rue seed, with six ounces each of water of pennyroyal and motherwort; reduce it to half the quantity by boiling and after straining add one drachm of troches of myrrh and three grains of saffron; sweeten the liquor with loaf sugar, and spice it with cinnamon.—­After having rested on this, let her strain again as much as possible, and if she be not successful, make a fumigation of half a drachm each of castor, opopanax, sulphur and asafoetida, pounding them into a powder and wetting the juice of rue, so that the smoke or fumes may go only into the matrix and no further.

If this have not the desired effect, then the following plaster should be applied:—­Take an ounce and a half of balganum, two drachms of colocynth, half an ounce each of the juice of motherwort and of rue, and seven ounces of virgin bees’ wax:  pound and melt them together, spreading them on a cere-cloth so that they may spread from the navel to the os pubis and extending to the flanks, at the same time making a pessary of wood, enclosing it in a silk bag, and dipping it in a decoction of one drachm each of sound birthwort, savin colocinthis, stavescare and black hellebore, with a small sprig or two of rue.