GRATAROLO, Gulielmo Opuscula…ab ipso autore denuò correcta & aucta Lyon, apud Gabrielem Coterium, 1558
16mo. 192ff. Title within a woodcut grotesque border, a little browning and discolouration, some deletions (see below), in old boards, new endpapers.
Third collected edition of Gratarolo’s Works and early editions of most of the individual ones. They comprise: De memoria reparanda, De praedictione morum naturarumque hominum, De temporum omnimoda mutatione, perpetua & certissima signa & prognostica, De literatorum & eorum qui magistratum gerunt conseruanda valetudine & Pestis descriptio. ‘No man in the sixteenth century did more to circulate and to perpetuate a varied selection of curious works, past and present, in the fields of medicine, natural science and occult science than did Guglielmo Gratarolo or William Gratarolus, the physician of Bergamo who turned protestant and settled at Basel. It was he who snatched the work of Pomponazzi on incantations, written in 1520, almost literally as a brand from the burning, brought it from Italy north of the Alps, and printed it in 1556…’, Thorndike, V, p.600. Gratarolo (1516-c.1562) practised medicine in his home town for a while before removing to Basel in 1555. In 1562 he was summoned to Marburg to be professor of medicine. Here he stayed only only a year before returning to Basel where he continued his medical practice and devoted himself to his studies. Two of the above works are particularly important. The De literatorum et eorum qui magistratum gerunt conseruanda valetudine is a fascinating little book, almost completely about food and wine as means to preserve health. All meat and game are described as well as almost every vegetable with advice on when to eat them, whether to eat them hot or cold, and in what order. There is a long section on wine of which Simon says ‘Gratarolus…donne dans ce petit traité d’excellents avis aux étudiants et magistrats en ce qui concerne les vins qui conviennent et ceux qui ne conviennent pas aux intellectuels’. Gratarolo’s little work on memory first appeared in 1553 and ‘was in sufficient demand to insure a number of subsequent printings, ususally in the slightly occult company of the tracts on physiognomy and weather prediction [both here present]…It was primarily medical, listing various unguents, plasters and liniments supposed to be beneficial for the memory, and devoting only half a dozen pages to its second book on “local or artificial memory”, Thorndike, pp.606-07. The book throughout has been lightly censored, with most of the missing words or phrases, supplied in a later hand. At the foot of the title there is a near contemporary inscription explaining that the book has been censored according to the Roman Index.Adams G1029 (1554 edition); Olschki Choix VII, 8823; Caillet 4746; this edition not in BMC; not in RLIN; OCLC locates 4 US libraries
£1200
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