Infancy a Poem. Book the First

24 pages plus half-title and title page. Quarto format, text in very good condition, recently bound into cloth covers with printed title label. The first of six parts of Downman's important polemic on the nurture and education of children. In this first part he is severely critical of midwives and wet nurses: "The child is born. See, where the treacherous Nurse,/Or she who o'er Lucinda's Rite presides/Prepares the poisonous Drench: Forewarn'd, beware:/Within the fatal Drug lurks Death." (lines 70-74). As well as being a qualified doctor Downman wrote plays and other literary works.