Girolamo Fracastoro | Biography

Girolamo Fracastoro, famous for his insight into and literary works on natural philosophy, astronomy, and medicine, was born in Verona, Italy, the sixth of seven brothers in a well-respected family. His grandfather was physician to the reigning nobility of Verona; his mother--Camilla Mascarelli--is believed to have died while he was very young. Although his father's occupation is not known, it was he who introduced the young Fracastoro to literature and philosophy, tutoring him personally before sending him off to the Academy of Padua under the guardianship of an old family friend and teacher, Girolamo della Torre, and under whom Fracastoro would ultimately study medicine. In keeping with tradition, however, he first studied liberal arts--including literature, astronomy, mathematics, and philosophy--as well as geography, botany, and pharmacology. Fracastoro married Elena de Clavis around 1500 with whom he had a daughter and four sons. Two sons died very young, and Fracastoro expressed his heartache in a beautiful poem written for them.

Upon receiving his medical degree in 1502, Fracastoro began teaching logic and anatomy at the academy where he met Copernicus, who entered in 1501 to study medicine. In 1508, the war between the Roman Emperor Maximilian I and Venice closed the university, and Fracastoro fled to live near the border of Veneto where he apparently practiced medicine. In 1509 he returned to Verona, practicing medicine and managing Incaffi, the estate on the shores of Lake Garda inherited from his father. During the ensuing years, he developed relationships with well-known philosophers, scientists, and influential figures such as bishop Gian Matteo Giberti of Verona, a great patron of the arts and sciences.

At the turn of the sixteenth century, syphilis, the then mysteriously transmitted, ravaging, and untreatable epidemic, was spreading wildly through a terrified population. Around 1510, Fracastoro began composing a long and beautifully written narrative poem on the disease. Considered his most famous work, the 1,300-verse epic entitled Syphilis sive morbus Gallicus, (the French disease), written in tones of Virgil, Ovid, and Dante, combined fact and fantasy. He presented his poem in two books to Cardinal Pietro Bembo-- considered the best stylist of the age--in 1525 for Bembo's advice. Published in 1530 in three volumes and rapidly becoming popular, the first volume describes the horrors of the disease. The second, devoted to cures and preventions, culminates with a mythical tale of cause and cure. The third contains two mythical stories. The first story tells of Christopher Columbus's journey to the West Indies where the disease was rampant among the natives. Fracastoro depicts the natives as descendants of the lost city, Atlantis. As punishment for its wickedness, the gods plagued the city with the dreaded disease before plunging it into the depths of the ocean with violent earthquakes. It is in the West Indies that Columbus discovers the holy guaiacum tree, extractions from which could cure the disease. The second story tells of how a young shepherd named Sifilo blasphemed against the Sun god, Apollo. In his rage, Apollo afflicted the shepherd with a disease. Only after Sifilo appeased the god did Apollo and Juno provide the healing guaiacum tree. The disease is believed to have received its named from this tale. Fracastoro dedicated his volumes to Bembo, who claimed it was the "most precious gift he had ever received."

De contagione et contagiosis morbis et curatione, written by Fracastoro in 1546, contains the culmination of his philosophy on contagious diseases. Virtually centuries before the origins, causes, and transmission of diseases were understood scientifically, at a time when disease was perceived as punishment from God and influenced by natural phenomenon such as phases of the moon, Fracastoro began rejecting such theories. Because his medical educators believed in the "separation of the two realms of theology and science," he thought more scientifically, postulating that diseases were spread either by simple contact, by fomites (clothing, sheets, or other physical objects), or from a distance by seminaria morbi (seeds of contagion) which enter the body and rapidly multiply. Fracastoro has been called "the forerunner of the germ theory of infectious diseases," and credited with "prophetic intuition."

In 1545, Pope Paul III nominated Fracastoro as the physician to the Council of Trent, and around 1546 he became canon of Verona. He suffered a stroke on August 6, 1553, and died that same day, most likely in his villa at Incaffi. In 1555, his statue was erected near those of Pliny and Catullus in the Piazza dei Signori, Verona.