Today I offer 3 books which deal with female topics, procreation, psychology, child bearing and raising

Claude Quillet‘s poem is exceedingly stylish and yet quite informative, very, rarely found with all five of the engravings.

pseudo Albertus Magnus who was strongly influenced by Avicenna’s [Ibn-Sina (980-1037)] connects all stages of female sexual generation with the early medieval concept of the ventricular system (concavitate cerebri) [ventricles] (with fowing animal spirit inside) where the virtues (virtute) [faculties] were allocated and can effect the outcome of child birth.

Châstelain, who treated diseases of the nervous system Argues that that vapors and convulsions and hysteria are functions of body chemistry and sex.

I hope that you find these books as interesting as I have.

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1) 843J QUILLET, Claude, (1602-1661 ) [William Oldisworth, translator; Elisha Kirkall, engraver]

Callipædiæ : The Art of getting pretty children, In four books translated from the original Latin of Claudius Quillettus. By several hands.

London: Printed for Bernard Lintott at the Cross Keys between the Two Temple Gates in Fleetstreet, 1710                                                   Price $3,200

Octavo: 16 x 10 cm. Signatures A-M⁴.. Frontispiece, facing title and plates, facing pp. 1,16,31 and 47, not counted in the signatures or pagination. First English edition. Bound in Contemporary speckled sheep boards framed with single gilt fillet, spine in six compartments between raised bands, recent Morocco lettering piece gilt. Rubbing and scuffs to boards and spine, joints skillfully repaired, binding now sturdy and secure. Pages generally clean, with the plates in deep, rich impressions.   

First Edition in English of this neo-Latin poem on procreation, pregnancy, and the raising of children, the translation of which (from the French) is attributed in subsequent editions to William Oldisworth.):  complete with all five full-page engravings by Elisha Kirkall (the plates apparently were not ready when the book was issued and are often lacking, as with all three copies at the British Library) and four final index and advertisement leaves. This is quite a poem, very suggestive and informative! First published in Leiden, in 1655, and in Paris, in 1656. A Latin version was issued in London in 1708; two editions in English (the other printed for John Morphew) appeared in 1710 and in 1712. The French abbe Claude Quillet’s poem concerns not only raising children but also choosing the right wife, and offers thoughts on marriage, divided into four books: “The First treats of the Nature and Variety of Beauty, and of the Choice of a Wife. The Second, of Marriage and Enjoyment, with Laws and Rules relating to both, from Nature and Astrology. The Third, of Conception, and Imagination. The Fourth and Last, of the Beauty of the Mind, of Education and Virtue, and of the Variety of Climes, Customs, and Manners.” 

“KIRKALL, ELISHA (1682?–1742), engraver, born at Sheffield in Yorkshire about 1682, was son of a locksmith, from whom he learnt to work and engrave on metal. Walpole, Redgrave, and others erroneously give him the christian name of Edward. About 1702 he came to London, where he was employed ‘to grave arms, ornaments, etch and cut stamps in hard mettal for printing in books for several years’ (see Vertue in Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 23076). He also studied drawing in the new academy in Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He married early in life, as appears from his trade card, preserved in the print room of the British Museum (reproduction in Linton’s ‘Masters of Wood-engraving’), which bears the names of Mr. Elisha and Mrs. Elizabeth Kirkall, and the date 31 Aug. 1707. This card was cut in relief on metal, and not on wood, as sometimes stated. Kirkall has been classed (see Chatto and Jackson’sTreatise on Wood-engraving) as a wood-engraver, and credited with the revival of the art in the eighteenth century. He is also claimed as the first exponent in England of the white-line intaglio manner of wood-engraving, afterwards brought to such perfection by Thomas Bewick [q. v.] It is very doubtful, however, whether he engraved on wood at all. “ DNB

Foxon,; O 142 ; English Short Title Catalog; English Short Title Catalog,; T77310; Case,253 ; Wellcome IV p. 457. Grub Street ID 299454; https://estc.printprobability.org/record/17be1acd0ad826_dashboard_generated_id

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2) 704J pseudo Albertus Magnus

Albertus Magnus de secretis mulierum cum commento.

[Venetiis]; [Per Jo. Alvisium de Varisio], 1501. Price $8,800

Quarto 24 x 14.5 cm. Collation: a-g⁸. 56 leaves. (The text is that of the undated edition of Perugia.) This copy is bound in later vellum over paste paper boards. Some restorations to the last leaves covering small parts of the text, uniform and light browning of the first issue, but a very good, margined and fresh copy. Contemporary maniculae, notes and passim attention signs Similar to other copies I have seen.

(Impressum Venetiis : per Io. Aluisium de Varisio, 1501 die XVI mensis Octubris)

All early editions are quite rare. Only three U.S.copies of holding institutions listed in USTC: National Library of Medicine: UNIV OF ILLINOIS,

This book has been called “one of the most influential documents in the history of medieval scientific attitudes toward women” it is a culmination of Hippocratic, Galenic, and Aristotelian theories and discussions on sexuality and reproduction from both a medical and philosophical perspectives. The earliest manuscripts date from the beginning of the fourteenth century (possibly as early as c. 1300). This work exists in many manuscripts from the thirteenth century on, I’ve located about 75 copies worldwide. It was Printed first in 1481 and there exists 20 printed edition to the turn of the 15th century,(to 1501) all of these are rare, with the greatest part of holdings of any edition s being held by the Philadelphia college of Physicians (9) and Nation library of Medicine (10) leaving 22 copies of any edition spread across the country suggesting that this was a popular book and used to the point of scarcity and furthermore that the concepts expressed in this work were of great interest and perhaps influence.

Lynn Thorndike explored the attribution of this work to Albertus Magnus, and concludes that De Secretis and was probably composed by one of his followers during the late 13th or early 14th century. The text is interspersed with commentary also by unknown authorship, there extists two states of commentary and this is known as commentator ‘A’ . It is curious and determinative that the authors all refer to Albertus Magnus in the third person. (studies by Wickersheimer, 1923, Ferckel, 1954 and Thorndike, 1955).
This text might establish itself as scientific and philosophical treatis by the pseudo attribution to Albertus, in order to segregate itself from orther genera of ‘secret’ texts, including myth, folk lore, magic et c.

This text consists of 13 chapters;

On the Generation of the Embryo
On the Formation of the Fetus
Concerning the Influence of the Planets
On the Generation of Imperfect Animals
On the Exit of the Fetus from the Uterus
Concerning Monsters in Nature
On the Signs of Conception
On the Signs of Whether a Male or Female is in the Uterus
On the Signs of Corruption of Virginity
On the Signs of Chastity
Concerning a Defect of the Womb
Concerning Impediments to Conception
On the Generation of the Sperm

As our pseudo author of Albertus Magnus, the treatises’s “believed that the study of nature as perceived through sense experience and then analyzed in a rational manner forms a single discipline through which we come to comprehend the universe in its corporeal aspects. Human reproduction, a main subject of this treatise, is one of these aspects, that nevertheless has repercussions for our understanding of the entire cosmos” (Lemay, p. 3).

To speculate upon the community of reader addressed or the actual rader of this text has come to a point of controversy recently, Thondike suggests this was a text sort of book, while De Secretis was most likely “designed to be used within a religious community as a vehicle for instructing priests in natural philosophy, particularly as it pertains to human generation.”

“A strong subtext of the Secrets, however, is the evil nature of women and the harm they can cause to their innocent victims: young children and their male consorts. Clearly then, another purpose of this treatise is to malign the female sex, a tradition that extends back in Christianity to second-century misogynist writings” (Lemay, p. 16). Among the concepts that the text popularised were the idea that women’s menstrual blood was poisonous, that post-menopausal women (especially those who were poor) were more “venomous” because they could no longer expel the toxins, and that women were inherently lascivious beings with a physiological need to absorb the heat and life force of men. “It is these misogynistic ideas about women’s sexuality that seeded their demonization in the years that followed, as the Secrets served as a direct source for the Malleus Maleficarum. Indeed, the most famous statement from the Malleus explicitly connects witchery with ideas about women’s sexuality rooted in the medieval period: ‘All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable’”

(McLemore, “Medieval Sexuality, Medical Misogyny, and the Makings of the Modern Witch”, blog of the University of Notre Dame’s Medieval Studies Institute, October 30, 2020). Pseudo- Albertus Magnus (Hillard 55)

USTC No. 800052. https://www.ustc.ac.uk/editions/800052. Index Aureliensis CNCB 259. EDIT 16 CNCE 16221

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 “ As women experience more serenity than men  the most frequent cause of their convulsions and convulsive moments is serenity which accumulates more often in the ovaries or the glands of the mesentery than the folds of the brain or the ventricles. “

“Traité des convulsions et des mouvemens convulsifs qu’on appelle à présent vapeurs, par M. Chastelain.”

759J   M. Jean  Châstelain ±1715. (professeur de l’Université de Montpellier1697-1715).

Traité des convulsions et des mouvemens convulsifs qu’on appelle à présent vapeurs, par M. Chastelain.

Lyon : Anisson et Posuel,1691                               Price   $1,900

Octavo, 13 X 8 cm, Signatures a^6, A-K^12. Bound in full contemporary sheep over gilt spine with title. a nice original copy, slight bookworm damage on the title page and second leaf, otherwise an excellent internal copy.

In the entry for Chastelain in Eloy’s ‘Dictionnaire historique’ it is stated that, according to Astruc, Chastelain was the first professor to promulgate Harvey’s doctrines at Montpellier (‘Il m’a pourtant dit qu’il étoit le premier qui eût soutenu la circulation dans les écoles’). Monsieur Chastelain, was  Conseiller du Roi & Professeur roial in medecine, de l’Université de Montpellier.

During this role he was called for consultation in Bordeaux by his colleague Demery, with a young lady of condition “attacked by convulsion and periodic convulsive movements” … he wrote this treatise which was only to be a chapter in a general history of diseases which never saw the light of day. But in this book we get a glimpse of his ideas about Convulsions which tend to be rather traditional compared with Willis.  Jean Chastelain is one of four authors to have treated diseases of the nervous system in Montpellier with Lazare Riviere, J. Lazerme and Boissier des Sauvages.  

Still, despite the traditional way he deals with the unexplainable Chastelain expands typical work of the late seventeenth century that blends traditional humoralism with iatromechanism. This book considers true cases and actual mechanisms in the brain and body. 

Wellcome cat. of printed book; 17456;A, Krivatsy, NLM 2417.

Not in Garrison-Morton nor in Castiglioni. 

 There is a variant printed the same year in Paris with the sole indication of Anisson. (Inventaire de la Collection Anisson sur l’histoire de l’imprimerie et la librairie principalement a Paris) Variant bears the imprint: A Lyon & se vend a Paris, : Chez J. Anisson, directeur de l’imprimerie Roiale, ruë S. Jaques, vis-à-vis la ruë des Mathurins.