CARBÓN, DAMIÁN.

Libro del arte de las comadres o madrinas y del regimiento de las preñadas y paridas y de los niños.

CARBÓN, DAMIÁN.

Libro del arte de las comadres o madrinas y del regimiento de las preñadas y paridas y de los niños. Printer: Fernando Consoles. Palma de Mallorca, 24th December 1541. Size: 4º. 120 leaves (240 pages). Gothic script, beautiful, framed title pages (one in red and black ink plus others inside the text). Woodcut prints and engraved initials. ISBN: 84-87988-65-2

This work or "obrezica" as it was called by the author, an "expertissimo" doctor of arts and medicine, was produced in answer to a request for information from a "nobleman, greatly his superior", whose wife, "a woman of fine complexion and moderate exercise, content, and leading an honest life, had given birth to three or four stillborn children at the term of six months". Why? Damián Carbón offers an explanation, aware of "the difficulties of this subject and the disproportionate language used for this subject matter".

The print which illustrates the title page is accompanied by text in red and black ink, all of which is set within a frame of woodcut details, and portrays the meeting between the Virgin Mary and her cousin, Saint Elizabeth. There are two other internal title pages, also framed, including a print of the Annunciation. The work closes with a beautiful, framed engraving which depicts a writer seated at his desk.

-Our edition: Valencia, 2000. Coedited with the Library of the Faculty of Medicine at Complutense University, Madrid.
-An edition of 3,000 copies, numbered and signed by public notary, and personally signed by the printer-publisher.
-Binding: Parchment upon wooden board.
-Fabric-covered presentation case with gold tooled leather spine containing the facsimile.
-Specially manufactured laid paper.
-Optional: Study in Spanish: author yet to be determined. Included in Bibliofilia Antigua VII.