The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology

practised in Derby, then in Stafford and in 1656 he moved to London for the better education of his children. One of his sons helped him in his practice and one of his daughters became a midwife, attending her own cases and also working with her father. This book is first and foremost a practical work for the midwife. Willughby starts by admitting that he has no new practice of midwifery, he intends 'to inform the ignorant common midwives with such wayes as I have used with good successe. My thoughts bee onely for a publick good, and chiefly to benefit my own nation, and the midwives inhabiting England'. He was concerned to see the results of bad, rough and ready midwifery and taught that midwives must be discreet in what they said to the patient, to be gentle in their handling of the woman in labour and to let nature alone-'The womb is a place locked up. Let midwives so deale with their travailing women, so will the birth be more easy, and the child not pulled to pieces, or destroyed, nor the woman torn, or ruinated by the midwife's struglings, or stretching of their bodies. In fitting time, nature will open the womb.' In this volume the Observations in Midwifery comprises some three hundred pages with an index. There follows, also by Percivall Willughby, forty-five pages of an opusculum (or little work) for the Countrey Midwife which is in some respects of greater interest than the main work for it is packed full of intensely practical advice 'shewing the wayes how to deliver any difficult birth bee it naturall or unnaturall' and ending with a condemnation of Caesarean Section. The book is printed and bound most admirably and is cheap at £3.50. It would make an ideal gift for any medical man or midwife. Congratulations to all concerned in its production. J. S. TOMKINSON