Dominating the field of pediatric literature, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, were two treatises, the "De Rachitide" (1650) of Glisson, and Walter Harris', "De Morbis Acutis Infantum." The theories of the latter regarding "puerile humidity" and its resulting "acid putrefaction" as the cause of disease in childhood, were accepted almost universally, as evidenced by the numerous English editions and Continental translations through which his work passed subsequent to its first appearance in London in 1689. Not until a century later did Michael Underwood bring forth his "Treatise on the Disease of Children" (1789), and place the study of disease of childhood on a rational basis.
Considering the curious theories and therapeutic vagaries prevalent in this period, it is of interest to come on a work published during this interim which deals with children and their bringing up and yet fosters none of the mistaken notions of its