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CALLIPEDIA

Volume 4 · 264 words · 1797 Edition

the art of getting or breeding fine and beautiful children. We find divers rules and practices relating to this art, in ancient and modern writers. Among the magi, a sort of medicine called ermesia was administered to pregnant women, as a means of producing a beautiful issue. Of this kind were the kernels of pine-nuts ground with honey, myrrh, saffron, palm-wine, and milk. The Jews are said to have been solicitous about the beauty of their children, that care was taken to have some very beautiful child placed at the door of the public baths, that the women at going out being struck with his appearance, and retaining the idea, might all have children as fine as he. The Chinese take still greater care of their breeding women, to prevent uncouth objects of any kind from striking their imagination. Musicians are employed at night to entertain them with agreeable songs and odes, in which are set forth all the duties and comforts of a conjugal and domestic life; that the infant may receive good impressions even before it is born, and not only come forth agreeably formed in body, but well disposed in mind. Callipedia, nevertheless, seems to have been first erected into a just art by Claude Quillet de Chinon, a French abbot, who, under the fictitious name of Calvulus Letus, has published a fine Latin poem in four books, under the title of Callipedia, seu de pulchrae proles habendae ratione; wherein are contained all the precepts of that new art. There is a translation of it into English verse by Mr Rowe.