_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.