Note this also in general, that all that move the terms are good for making the delivery easy, such as myrrh, white amber in white wine, or lily water, two scruples or a drachm; or cassia lignea, dittany, each a drachm; cinnamon, half a drachm, saffron, a scruple; give a drachm, or take borax mineral, a drachm, and give it in sack; or take cassia lignea, a drachm; dittany, amber, of each a drachm; cinnamon, borax, of each a drachm and a half; saffron, a scruple, and give her half a drachm; or give her some drops of oil of hazel in convenient liquor; or two or three drops of oil of cinnamon in vervain water.  Some prepare the secundine thus:—­Take the navel-string and dry it in an oven, take two drachms of the powder, cinnamon a drachm, saffron half a scruple, with the juice of savin make trochisks; give two drachms; or wash the secundine in wine and bake it in a pot; then wash it in endive water and wine, take half a drachm of it; long pepper, galangal, of each half a drachm; plantain and endive seed, of each half a drachm; lavender seed, four scruples; make a powder, or take laudanum, two drachms; storax, calamite, benzoin, of each half a drachm; musk, ambergris each six grains, make a powder or trochisks for a fume.  Or use pessaries to provoke the birth; take galbanum dissolved in vinegar, an ounce; myrrh, two drachms, with oil of oat make a pessary.

An Ointment For the Navel.

Take oil of keir, two ounces, juice of savine an ounce, of leeks and mercury, each half an ounce; boil them to the consumption of the juice; add galbanum dissolved in vinegar, half an ounce, myrrh, two drachms, storax liquid a drachm, round bitwort, sowbread, cinnamon, saffron, a drachm, with wax make an ointment and apply it.

If the birth be retarded through the weakness of the mother, refresh her by applying wine and soap to the nose, confect. alkermas. diamarg.

These things may be applied to help nature in her delivery when the child comes to the birth the right way, and yet the birth be retarded; but if she finds the child comes the wrong way, and that she is not able to deliver the woman as she ought to be, by helping nature, and saving both mother and child (for it is not enough to lay a woman if it might be done any other way with more safety and ease, and less hazard to woman and child), then let her send speedily for the better and more able to help; and not as I once knew a midwife do, who, when a woman she was to deliver had hard labour, rather than a man-midwife should be sent for, undertook to deliver the woman herself (though told it was a man’s business), and in her attempting it, brought away the child, but left the head in the mother’s womb; and had not a man midwife been presently sent for, the mother had lost her life as well as the child; such persons may rather be termed butchers than midwives.  But supposing the woman’s labour to be natural, I will next show what the midwife ought to do, in order of her delivery.