Girolamo Fracastoro (* around 1478 in Verona; "† 8 August 1553 in Incaffi (close Verona)) were an Italian physician and poet. It coined/shaped the disease term of the Syphilis.

Fracastoro was born 1478 as a son of a distinguished catholic Patrizierfamilie in Verona in the Republic of Venice. It studied Padua at the university, where it co-operated with the astronomer Nikolaus Kopernikus. So Fracastoro was thoroughly a scientist of the Renaissance, not only in the areas of the medicine, literature and astronomy, but also as geologist, geographer, philosopher and a mathematician.

A substantial sphere of activity Fracastoros were transferable diseases. He is regarded of some authors as one the Wegbereiter of the modern microbiology, since he represented the view that certain diseases will transfer by specific germs. This Kontagienlehre was again taken up later (than contrast to the Miasmalehre) by the Jakobs Henle and Robert cook.

1530 published Fracastoro in Verona a famous poem over the Syphilis (Syphilis, sive morbi gallici, libri tres, ad Petrum Bembum). The disease name Syphilis is attributed to this poem. In the year 1538 its book Homocentricorum appeared sive de stellis, more liber unus in Venice. Much considered also its 1546 in Venice three books De published were contagionibus et contagiis morbis et eorum curatione (three books of the Kontagien, the diseases and their treatment). They contain among other things the first characteristic description the plague and the typhoid fever.

1546/47 worked Fracastoro as a physician of the council of Trient. It died on 8 August 1553 in Incaffi at the Gardasee (close Verona, today's place name Affi).

Literature

• Wolfgang And Eckart: History of the medicine. 3. Edition. Springer publishing house, Berlin, Heidelberg and New York 1998, ISBN 3-540-63756-7

Articles in category "Girolamo Fracastoro"

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