ABSTRACT
William Smellie initiated the large-scale teaching of midwifery in London; he realized the potential of the midwifery forceps; and he produced a Treatise on the theory and practice of midwifery that dominated published obstetrics for a generation and beyond. In the 1720s Smellie was a surgeon and apothecary in Lanark; among the cases in his local practice was emergency obstetric surgery of the traditional kind. Smellie's quest for improved methods in midwifery started and ended with the forceps, and from 1751, thanks to his Treatise, he was identified with the instrument by friend and foe alike. Yet that very text reveals that his attitude to the instrument had gone through a series of changes in the 1740s. The most suitable way to approach this theme is to start with Smellie's own autobiographical account of his methods for the management of obstructed births by the head, an account he appended to one of his cases.
