De la maniere de nourrir et gouverner les enfans dès leur naissance (review)

Simon de Vallambert's treatise of 1565 on the care of the newborn and of young children is a fascinating example of the way in which doctors who had previously composed works in Latin turned to the French language to reach a wider readership, notably literate women. Colette H. Winn, an expert in sixteenth-century writings for and by women, provides a fine scholarly edition of this text (some 350 pages), accompanied by appendices with extracts from three other contemporary medical works, and a useful — though not exhaustive — list of over sixty editions of treatises bearing on paediatrics which were printed in western Europe (in English, French, German, Italian, Latin and Spanish) before the end of the sixteenth century. In the Introduction, Winn gives an overview of Vallambert's earlier career as a humanist, poet and court doctor (acknowledging the important original research in this area by Marie-Madeleine Fontaine). Vallambert ostensibly addresses the treatise to his employer, Marguerite de Savoie, who had recently given birth to a son, and also expresses a desire to be 'entendu . . . des femmes de France' (p. 116). However, as Winn rightly argues, the combination of his clear and concise style and his frequent references to classical authorities are likely to have interested a broad readership — midwives, mothers, but also, I would think, surgeons, apothecaries, and perhaps some fathers. While there is only one known edition of the work, various later French Renaissance doctors do refer to it, or borrow from it. I would agree with Winn's assessment that, for Renaissance physicians, what we would term paediatrics was normally treated within the broader context of general medicine, and it is therefore particularly appropriate that she provides a full discussion of medical and social attitudes to breastfeeding, care of infants and so on, and also of the growing market for regimens. She demonstrates that, while most of Vallambert's advice does not depart from standard medical practice of the time, he places particular emphasis on the importance of his own observations, and develops discussions of the symptoms accompanying childhood diseases. Winn annotates the text carefully, drawing comparisons with other classical and Renaissance medical writings. I note one surprising omission: she makes almost nothing of Vallambert's debt to the neo-Latin paediatric treatise by Gabriel Miron (published in 1544), although this has been discussed in detail in a paper by Jacqueline Bertier. Winn's glossary is particularly useful for the definitions of the herbs and remedies (a subject also developed in footnotes). In short, this is a very good critical edition of a readable work which will interest early modernists working on such themes as motherhood, family life, childhood and health or illness.