Before any instrument is employed

Before any instrument is employed

Before any instrument is employed

Before any instrument is employed, the pup should be within the vagina. This is a rule that can hardly be with impunity violated by the generality of practitioners. Simple and brief as may be the direction, it is one that only on rare occasions may be safely disregarded; and of the exceptional case, mention will be made hereafter. The pup must be within the passage; and not only there, but so there, as to seem impacted, before assistance by means of instruments is necessary. The largest fœtus can, in almost every case, proceed thus far; and where it is of too great a size to come so low, any interference would be desperate; for then it must be of such a magnitude as to destroy the probability of delivery being accomplished.