Early modern Europeans conceptualized geographical displacement in accordance with a long-standing medical tradition that accommodated competing views on the matter. Medical interest in relocation and its effects may be traced as far back as Hippocrates’s Aphorisms (fifth century BC), one of the few treatises in the Hippocratic corpus to be later incorporated into the standard curriculum of Renaissance medical faculties.28 Hippocratic doctors often prescribed ‘changes of air’ to their patients, especially in the case of diseases
25 Livy records several waves in the deportation of the Ligurians to the plains north of the river Po (187-172 BC): see 39.2.9, 42.22.5-6. Another 47,000 Ligures Apuani (settled in the modern Italian provinces of La Spezia, Massa-Carrara, and Lucca) were moved to the heart of Samnium in 180 BC: see Liv., 40.38.1-9, 41.1- 6. See Broadhead 2002: 15; Pina Polo 2009: 281.
26 See Bodin 2013: 332 (5.178) and Bodin 1986, vol. 3: 48-49 (5.1). 27 See Bodin 2013: 234 (5.24-25).
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that were reputed to have environmental origins. For instance, when one of his clients developed an ulcer in his throat that no drug seemed able to treat, the great Pergamese physician Galen sent him away from Rome, where he had fallen ill, to Stabia, a small town in the gulf of Naples that was known for its dry and healthy climate.29
Hippocrates himself saw relocation as a most effective remedy to epilepsy, a condition that he attributed to an excess of phlegm in the body.30 Yet the father of medicine never concealed the fact that changes of air were extremely stressful for the body—including, indeed especially, the sick body. To ‘heal, cool, or otherwise move the body in any way much and suddenly is dangerous’, he stated repeatedly—a maxim that would penetrate deeply into the medical conscience, and indeed the general worldview, of later generations.31 Thus for Hippocrates, as well as for his followers, relocation was at once an effective medical therapy and a highly risky practice.
Such complex views of geographical displacement persisted into the early modern period. In a time of increased human mobility, the consequences of a change of climate were unsurprisingly at the centre of widespread debate. Anxieties over the potentially negative effects of displacement haunted not only long-distance travellers heading to other continents, but also those who more modestly moved to a neighbouring country or within the very same region. Europe was seen, with good reason, as a patchwork of different microclimates featuring an extraordinary environmental variety. In a relatively short time, one could go from frigid mountain landscapes in Switzerland to rolling hills in sunny Italy, from marshy plains in Languedoc to the parched wastelands of Castile. Indeed, when
29 Gal., Methodus medendi, 5.12, 361K-366K (Galen 2011, vol. 2: 85-91).
30 Hippoc., Aph., 2.45 (Hippocrates 1931: 119). See Avicenna, Canon, 268 (Avicenna 1973: 184), on epilepsy as a disease typical of the phlegmatic complexion.
31 Hippoc., Aph., 2.51 (Hippocrates 1931: 121; revised translation). For examples of early modern authors echoing this maxim, see Vaughan 1600: 72; La Framboisière 1600: 35. On the manifold dimensions of Hippocrates’s stance on change and habit, see Jouanna 2012 (Chapter 2).
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simply moving across one’s native country one was likely to experience dramatic variations not only in the temperature, thickness, moistness, and overall quality of the air, but also in the properties of local food and water—as these, too, rested upon environmental factors.32 Thus even the shortest travel—‘from one place to another nearby, or from one province to another which is not entirely opposite in nature’, to borrow the words of the Milanese physician Ludovico Settala—could expose the traveller to considerable temperamental alterations.33
Against this backdrop, a new strand of medical literature flourished that was specifically tailored to the needs of travellers concerned with the preservation of their physical and mental health. Some of these books were extremely popular—for instance, Guglielmo Grataroli’s De regimine iter agentium (1561), one of the earliest examples of the genre, went through at least six editions in thirty years.34 Taken as a whole, this corpus of texts generally revolved around two central and interrelated ideas: the universal habitability of the world, and the possibility for Europeans of successfully adapting to any climate, provided that they follow certain basic rules of hygiene and behaviour.35 The climatological discourse on temperateness and the moral discourse on temperance were therefore intimately related in this medical literature, which tended to represent disease not
32 See Wear 1992: 129.
33 Settala 1632, vol. 1: 27 (‘de loco vicino ad propinquum alium […] vel etiam de provincia ad aliam non omnino contrariam’). On Settala, see above, 1.3.2.a.
34 First published in Basel by Brylinger, the De regimine iter agentium was printed three times in stand-alone editions (Strasburg: Wendelin II Rihel, 1563; Cologne: Peter Horst, 1571, under the title Proficiscentium seu magnis itineribus diversas terras obeuntium medicina [Nuremberg: Katharina Gerlach, 1591]) and was included twice in larger miscellanies on medicine and travel: De arte peregrinandi libri II variis exemplis (Nuremberg: Katharina Gerlach, 1591) and De conservanda valetudine (Frankfurt: Wechel and Wischer, 1591). The north-Italian physician and Protestant émigré Guglielmo Grataroli (1516-1568) was also the author of a regimen for scholars and magistrates (De literatorum et eorum qui magistratibus funguntur conservanda praeservandaque valetudine), first printed in Basel in 1555 by Henricus Petrus, and of several works on alchemy, physiognomy, and medical astrology.
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as an inevitable consequence of geographical displacement, but rather as ‘a moral failure that could only be laid at the feet of the sick person himself’.36
Other authors, however, were more sceptical with regard to the possibility of successfully adapting to a climate different than one’s own. For the Welsh jurist William Vaughan, whose 1600 treatise Naturall and Artificiall Directions for Health (see above, Chapter 2) contains several remarks on relocation, the philosophical principle that ‘every mans naturall place preserveth him, which is placed in it’ provided a very strong argument against the convenience of displacement. ‘A mans native and countries aire is the best’, Vaughan wrote, thus echoing a leitmotiv of early-modern medical culture that, as Andrew Wear and others have noted, also played an important role in orienting actual therapeutic practice.37 Indeed, sick travellers were often instructed to go back to their birthplace or habitual abode in order to recover their health—a piece of advice that patients cherished even when they were not in a position to put it into practice.38
Vaughan’s eulogy of ‘native airs’ points to the complex understanding that early modern Europeans had of birthplace as a locus of physical as well as cultural and social belonging.39 From a medical viewpoint, the notion that ‘native airs’ are inherently more salubrious than unfamiliar ones stems from the assumption (explored at length in the previous chapter) that health consists in a delicate balance between one’s natural temperament and the surrounding environment. In this perspective, changing place, by modifying one of the elements in this relation, inevitably triggers changes in the other as well, with consequences on a person’s overall well-being. Yet for the very same reason
36 Hill 2013: 90-91. Gillies 1986 and Evans 2012 make similar points. 37 Vaughan 1600: 2; compare Brooke 1650: 68. See Wear 1992: 126.
38 The story of Vincenzo Alamanni, which I mentioned earlier (see 1.3.2.a), is a good case in point.
39 A similar dynamic is reflected in the works of many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century physicians and natural historians, who invoked culturally constructed oppositions between ‘indigenous’ plants and foods and the ‘exotic’ species coming from abroad in order to advocate the higher efficacy of native substances for both nutritional and medicinal purposes. See Wear 1992: 127-29; Wear 1999; Elmer and Grell 2004; Cooper 2007.
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that displacement was considered dangerous for well-functioning individuals, it was also generally deemed beneficial for those who already suffered from some sort of temperamental ailment. In that case, travel could prove instrumental in restoring a healthy balance between complexion and environment, thus operating in favour of, rather than against, someone’s bodily and spiritual equilibrium. Hippocrates had said it, experience proved it: as even a staunch proponent of ‘native airs’ such as William Vaughan was forced to admit, ‘oftentimes […] sick folks do recover their former health onely by chaunge of aire’.40
While we lack a full examination of early-modern ‘medical migration’, recent studies suggest that relocation for health reasons was a remarkably widespread phenomenon in the early colonial period, one that mobilized large numbers of people and positively contributed to directing their movement and settlement around the world. In her analysis of medical migration in the British Atlantic, Katherine Johnston has particularly shown that eighteenth-century Britons took medical migration seriously enough to move far from home and away from their loved ones in an anxious (and often frustrating) ‘search for a place where the climate fit their bodies’.41 As Johnston rightly points out, the task of identifying a suitable destination was itself far from easy, not only because conceptions of environmental optima occasionally diverged, but also because individual constitutions were thought to react to the same environment in different, and largely unpredictable, ways. Consequently, there was no other means than first-hand experience ‘for travellers or potential colonists to know which types of air might suit their particular bodies’.42
Medical migration could take different forms. It could be a temporary measure, lasting only for as long as was required for the patient’s full recovery. Thus early modern
40 Vaughan 1600: 3. 41 Johnston 2013: 458.
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physicians routinely prescribed brief ‘changes of air’ as a remedy against light temperamental imbalances, while English gentlemen, according to the slightly amused testimony of a contemporary, used to send their sons abroad for short stays in warmer countries, in the hope that those ‘bolder climates’ would help ‘correct their flegm’.43
More serious cases, on the other hand, required a longer if not a permanent change of residence. For the eighteenth-century Scottish physician George Cheyne, one possible way of fighting scurvy (a disease particularly common in Britain at the time) was to migrate to ‘warmer climates, which, by a freer perspiration and lighter diet […] universally cure those who are afflicted with it’.44 Relocation to warmer climates was advisable against other forms of disease besides scurvy: the ‘fragrant’ tropical air would supposedly help persistent coughs and other ailments typical of old age and phlegmatic constitutions,45 while closer to Europe, the climate of Cyprus was said to cure ‘any ulcers of the lungs’.46 For the therapy to be effective, however, it was essential that the change of air take place, in Cheyne’s words, ‘before nature be quite worn out’, namely at a relatively young age, lest the illness be too advanced to be treated by means of simple relocation.
Not all types of medical relocation required travelling long distances. For instance, urban residents might find it enough to leave the city grounds for a few hours and enjoy the invigorating effects of pure air in the surrounding countryside. According to the French royal physician La Framboisière, all those engaged in stressful mental activities, such as scholars and magistrates, should ‘frequently go amuse themselves in the countryside or other open spaces, where there is abundance of air which can offset the considerable loss
43 These are words of Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674), as reported in Warneke 1995: 244. Phlegmatic complexions, frequent in cold and humid climates, were typically regarded as the least disposed towards intellectual activity.
44 Cheyne 1725: 180. On Cheyne, see above, 2.3.1 and 2.3.2.
45 Letters of Samuel Martin to Samuel Martin, Esq., 10 June 1774 and 20 February 1775, both quoted in Johnston 2013: 455.
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of spirits and brace their weary mind’. La Framboisière promised that ‘after deeply inhaling the fresh air’ they would immediately feel ‘lighter and full of energies’.47 In a similar vein, the Italian political writer Giovanni Botero (1544-1617) praised the French King Francis I for creating a public park on the outskirts of Paris (perhaps the Bois de Boulogne, whose grounds were partially open to the public), so that the students enrolled at the local university would ‘have commodity and means to take the air and to recreate themselves with honest exercises’.48 Nothing, indeed, is ‘more important for life than air’, or more ‘apt to delight and cheer up the spirits and mind of students’ than ‘wholesome air’, ‘rivers, fountains, springs and woods’.49
The existence of microclimates within the same region—a fact commonly acknowledged by chorological climate theorists50—could also easily be exploited for medical purposes. As we have seen in the previous chapter, Alessandro Petronio’s late sixteenth-century treatise on the medical topography of Rome included perceptive remarks in this sense. Petronio observed that certain diseases, such as the dreaded capiplenium, tended to affect residents of the humid Tiber valley while sparing those who lived on the well-ventilated hilltops.51 He thus not only concluded that capiplenium was essentially an environmental disease due to an excess of moistness in the air; he also posited that those
47 La Framboisière 1600: 36-37 (‘ceux qui sont assidus à l’estude ou ordinairement occupez aux affairez publiques’; ‘aller souvent s’égayer aux champs, ou en quelque place spacieuse, où il y ait beaucoup d’air, pour reparer la grande dissipation de leurs esprits, et fortifier leur cerveau affoibli de travail’; ‘plus dispos et gaillards, apres avoir tres-bien humé l’air frais’). On La Framboisière, see above, 2.3.1 and 2.3.2.
48 Botero 1956b: 252 (2.4), modified translation (‘Francesco Primo Re di Francia, accioche gli scolari dell’Università di Parigi, ch’erano al suo tempo quasi infiniti, havessero commodità di pigliar aria, e di ricrearsi honestamente, assegnò loro un gran prato vicino alla Città, et al fiume; dove, senza disturbo, potessero a lor modo diportarsi’ [Botero 1990b: 340]).
49 Botero 1956b: 267 (2.11), 252 (2.4), modified translations (‘l’aere, del quale non è cosa nessuna, che più importi alla vita’ [Botero 1990b: 358]; ‘importa assai, che la città, dove tu vuoi fondar Studio, sia d’aria salubre, e di sito allegro, e vago, dove siano, e fiumi, e fonti, e boschi’ [Botero 1990b: 340]).
50 For a definition of ‘chorological’ climate theory, see above, 1.2.3.b. 51 On Petronio and the ‘capiplenium’, see above, 2.3.1.
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who suffered from it should be moved from the valley to ‘the hills, or some other place than Rome’,52 where the drier climate would ensure a speedier recovery.
Many climate theorists explicitly theorized ‘changing air’ as a last resort against harmful environmental influence. The French physician Joseph Du Chesne stated for instance that, whenever regimen could not help nor the local air ‘be rectified’ by artificial means, ‘the only way to remediate’ was ‘to change place and go live somewhere better’.53 His younger colleague La Framboisière similarly reckoned that the most important thing to do ‘in order to enjoy a long and healthy life’ was to ‘choose a good air, and avoid the bad ones’.54 La Framboisière was certainly not alone in giving such advice; all over Europe, early-modern medical authors concurred that the ‘chusing of a good aire’ (as Vaughan put it), was of the utmost importance not only for enjoying good health, but also for achieving intellectual and moral excellence.55 But what exactly was ‘good air’, and how could one determine whether a place had it? On what grounds should one choose a ‘better place’ worth moving to? As the next section will show, the absence of a clearcut answer to such questions was what made geographical displacement possible and yet, at the very same time, inherently problematic.