Untitled - UTSC Humanities Research Projects server - University of ...

Travel Sickness 199
befitted his status. 74 The book went through some twelve editions
between 1556 and 1670 and was probably the most popular
work of its kind in the early modern age. Educated in Padua,
Gratarolo had fled to Basle around 1550. He secured a chair
there some ten years later. He stressed in his preface the idea
that I have seen as implicit in earlier regimens: that we are all
travellers on the journey of life. Mobility is standard, not fixity.
In his case the emphasis derived especially from contact with
the Italian Spirituali. A rigorous Calvinist, he yet collected
notes on incantations and defended alchemy. He wrote a
modern physiognomy, and became famous for a book on
repairing memory lapses. 75 The latter might endear him to
scholars. Yet he has one further claim to their affection. Besides
his regimen for travellers, perhaps inspired by an uncomfortable
flight from his native land, he also wrote one in keeping
with his profession. This was a regimen (later translated into
English) for sedentary literati. 76 All others travel. Scholars
alone are so immobile as to require special guidance on health. 77
74 I used De regimine iter agentium, vel equitum, vel peditum, vel navi, vel
curru seu rheda, 2nd edn. (Strasbourg, 1563).
75 Englished as The Castel of Memorie (London, 1573).
76 Henrici Rantzouii De conseruanda valetudine liber . . . Seorsim accessit
Guilielmi Grataroli . . . De literatorum, & eorum qui magistratum gerunt, conseruanda
valetudine, liber (Frankfurt, 1591). Englished as A Direction for the
Health of Magistrates and Studentes (London, 1574).
77 Acknowledgements: beyond those thanked above, for unstinting advice
and references I am grateful to Jim Adams, Sam Barnish, David Bennett,
Vivian Nutton, Carole Rawcliffe, Emilie Savage-Smith, Philip van der Eijk,
Heinrich von Staden, and Faith Wallis.