significance,⸺was the preservation of this delicate and finespun web, from the havock which was generally made in it by the violent compression and crush which the head was made to undergo, by the nonsensical method of bringing us into the world by that foremost.
⸺This requires explanation.
My father, who dipped into all kinds of books, upon looking into Lithopaedus Senonesis de Partu difficili , published by Adrianus Smelvgot , had found out, that the lax and pliable state of a child’s head in parturition, the bones of the cranium having no sutures at that time, was such,⸺that by force of the woman’s efforts, which, in strong labour-pains, was equal, upon an average, to the weight of 470 pounds averdupois acting perpendicularly upon it;—it so happened, that in 49 instances out of 50, the said head was compressed and moulded into the shape of an oblong conical piece of dough, such as a pastrycook generally rolls up in order to make a pye of.—Good God! cried my father, what havock and destruction must this make in the infinitely fine and tender texture of the cerebellum!—Or if there is such a juice as Borri pretends,—is it not enough to make the clearest liquid in the world both feculent and mothery?
But how great was his apprehension, when he farther understood, that this force acting upon the very vertex of the head, not only injured the brain itself, or cerebrum,—but that it necessarily squeezed and propelled the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, which was the immediate seat of the understanding!⸺Angels and ministers of grace defend us! cried my father,⸺can any soul withstand this shock?—No wonder the intellectual web is so rent and tattered as we see it; and that so many of our best heads are no better than a puzzled skein of silk,⸺all perplexity,⸺all confusion within-side.
But when my father read on, and was let into the secret, that when a child was turned topsy-turvy, which was easy for an operator to do, and