Girolamo Fracastoro was an Italian physician, poet, and scholar in mathematics, geography and astronomy. Fracastoro subscribed to the philosophy of atomism, and rejected appeals to hidden causes in scientific investigation.
Fracastoro was born in Verona, Republic of Venice and educated at Padua where at 19 he was appointed professor at the University. On account of his eminence in the practice of medicine, he was elected physician of the Council of Trent. A bronze statue was erected in his honor by the citizens of Padua, while his native city commemorated their great compatriot by a marble statue. He lived and practised in his hometown. In 1546 he proposed that epidemic diseases are caused by transferable tiny particles or "spores" that could transmit infection by direct or indirect contact or even without contact over long distances. In his writing, the "spores" of diseases may refer to chemicals rather than to any living entities.
He appears to have first used the Latin word fomes, meaning tinder, in the sense of infectious agent, in his essay on contagion De Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis, published in 1546: "I call fomites [from the Latin fomes, meaning "tinder"] such things as clothes, linen, etc., which although not themselves corrupt, can nevertheless foster the essential seeds of the contagion and thus cause infection.". His theory remained influential for nearly three centuries, before being superseded by a fully developed germ theory.The name for syphilis is derived from Fracastoro's 1530 epic poem in three books, Syphilis sive morbus gallicus , about a shepherd boy named Syphilus who insulted the Greek god Apollo and was punished by that god with a horrible disease. The poem suggests using mercury and "guaiaco" as a cure. His 1546 book also gave the first description for typhus. The collected works of Fracastoro appeared for the first time in 1555.
A portrait of Fracastoro that has been in the collection of the National Gallery since 1924 has recently been attributed to the renowned Italian painter Titian.
The re-attribution has led scholars to speculate that Titian may have painted the portrait in exchange for syphilis treatment.
Hieronymi Fracastorii De Contagione Et Contagiosis Morbis Et Eorum Curatione, Libri III (1930), translation and notes by Wilmer Cave Wright, p. 5
