ANNALS OF MEDICAL HISTORY FRANCIS R'PACKARD'M'D'EDITOR [PHILADELPHIA] PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY PAUL - B - HOEBER 67-69 EAST FIFTY-NINTH STREET * NEW YORK CITY p p f ! mm.. ■ '^ r * T ? ANNALS OF MEDICAL HISTORY V o l u m e i S p r i n g 1917 N u m b e r i A ...... *y" THE SCIENTIFIC POSITION OF GIROLAMO FRACASTORO [1478 ?—1553] WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE SOURCE, CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF HIS THEORY OF INFECTION By CHARLES AND DOROTHEA SINGER OXFORD, ENGLAND IROLAMO FRAC- has been called the “ academic” period of ASTORO was born the Renaissance and received the most in Verona in 14 7 8 1 complete education available in his day. In and he died in his his youth he attended the University of villa near that city Padua, where he had a number of brilliant in 1553. He came of associates, several of whom exercised con­ an honorable stock siderable influence upon him. Among them which had produced were Gaspare Contarini (1483-1542) who many distinguished physicians. Of one of later, as cardinal, sought, at the diet of these, Aventino Fracastoro, who was prac­ Ratisbon, to effect a reconciliation between tising medicine as early as 1325 we read Catholics and Protestants; Giambattista that he was medica clarissimus arte, astra Rhamnusio (1485-1557), the Italian Hak­ poll novit novitque latencia rerum, utile luyt, who inscribed to Fracastoro his great consilium civibus et dominis.2 Viaggi et Navigationif the fine scholar Andrea Navagero (1483-1529) to whom y I. THE CHARACTER AND WRITINGS OF Teobaldo Manucci dedicated the editio prin- FRACASTOR ceps of Pindar4 and who himself edited for the The subject of our study, Girolamo Aldine press the works of Quintilian, Virgil, Fracastoro, was himself brought up in what Lucretius, Ovid, Terence, Horace and the 1 The date usually given for Fracastor’s birth is in Italia,” Venice, 1915, p. 20. If Massalongo is right 1483. Reasons for referring the event to 1478 are Fracastor must have been rather older than most given by Professor Roberto Massalongo in his students when he attended the University. “ Girolamo Fracastoro e la rinascenza della medicina 2 Giuseppe Biadego, “ Medici veronesi e una r , \ Oq 1 2 Annals of Medical History Speeches of Cicero; and three distinguished Perhaps the deepest impression on Fra- brethren, townsmen of Fracastoro, whose castor’s mind in these formative days was father, Girolamo Della Torre, a learned made by the conflict between the opposing physician, perhaps determined the student’s schools of Aristotelians that divided the application to his own profession, while one University during the early years of the of the sons, who died at an early age, stimu­ sixteenth century. The two protagonists lated Fracastor to embark on his astro­ were the Bolognese anatomist Alessandro nomical research. Achillini (1463-1518), who had left his own Among such companions Fracastor early University to profess a form of Averroism developed facility as a writer of elegant at Padua, and Pietro Pomponazzi (1462- verse, and although to a later generation 1525), also a physician, who inclined to the the enthusiasm with which his effusions interpretation of Alexander Aphrodisias and were greeted may appear excessive, he yet whose even more heterodox teaching ulti­ gained through their composition a clear­ mately led to his emigration in the reverse ness of style which is not the smallest of his direction from Padua to Bologna. Though excellencies as a scientific writer. But there he is said to have been incapable of inter­ was another fellow student of Fracastor preting Aristotle to his hearers from the for whom was reserved a destiny far greater original Greek, Pomponazzi was yet a very than that of any whom we have named. spirited and original teacher, of great in­ The young Pole, Nicholaus Koppernigk dependence of thought. He was wholly (I473_I543)» had already spent several divorced from the religion of his day and years in the study of Law at Bologna,8 he died repudiating the hope of Christi­ when in 1501 he entered his name as a anity. student of medicine at Padua. Copernicus But Pomponazzi represents a movement remained in the medical school for some of far more importance than any mere four years, and from that period dates his school of Aristotelian interpretation. He dissatisfaction with the Ptolemaic doctrine stands for Naturalism, for the attempt to of a geocentric Universe. Fracastor was him­ explain the World and all that it contains self a keen critic of Ptolemy’s teaching, and on the basis of known or discoverable laws. it seems more than probable that the two That many of the laws considered by him young men had exchanged ideas during the as demonstrated now seem absurdities, that period when they must often have sat side on insufficient evidence he regarded certain by side in the lecture rooms at Padua.6 earthly events as related to the movements During the later part of the sojourn of of the heavenly bodies with the same assur­ Copernicus in Padua, Fracastor was ap­ ance that we now ascribe them to climatic pointed tutor in anatomy (conciliarius ana- or meteorological conditions, these are errors tomicus) and the Polish student, who was in the application of his method that need nevertheless the older of the two, must have not affect our judgment of the importance attended his former classmate’s demonstra­ of his philosophical position. tions.7 Thus Pomponazzi stood for the reign of Iibreria medica del sec. X IV ” in the Atti del reale di Bologna” in “ Monografie storiche sullo studio istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti LXXV, parte Bolognese,” Bologna, 1888. secunda 5723, Venice, 1916. 6 In the dedication of the “ De revolutionibus” to 3 Giambattista Rhamnusio, “ Viaggi et naviga- the Pope (1542) Copernicus says that it is now “ four tioni,” Venice, 1550. nines of years” since the heliocentric system was conceived. This brings its birth at least as far back 4 Aldus Manutius: “ Pindar,” Venice, 1513. as 1506, and he did not leave Padua till 1505. 6 Carlo Malagola, “ Niccolo Coppernico nello studio 7 Antonio Favaro, “ Lo studio di Padova al tempo T he Scientific Position of G irolamo F racastoro 3 natural law as does Fracastor, his assiduous 1549, Pope 1534-1549). Nor was Alessandro pupil, although the latter became in certain Farnese the younger, Cardinal and patron other respects the opponent of his teacher.8 of the arts, to whom Fracastor dedicated Fracastor was himself, however, constitu­ the “ De contagionibus ” and the poem tionally incapable of the controversial at­ “ Joseph,” less influenced by the prevailing titude of Pomponazzi. In the serene de­ humanism or more addicted to theological tachment of his humanism he exhibited no studies than his august relative, the prince opposition, either open or concealed, to the of nepotists who sat in Peter’s Chair. current of Christianity, nor did he shun the Fracastor’s temper of mind, like that of company of clerics. But the churchmen that these men, was widely removed from theo­ Fracastor made his associates were of the logical and scholastic topics. He had, how­ class, common enough in the early sixteenth ever, a nobler motive than the empty and century, in whom Catholic tradition was mainly sensuous classicism that was the almost entirely displaced by the prevailing prevailing note of the intellectual Italians literary paganism. His friend, Cardinal of his day. His greatest preoccupation was Pietro Bembo, the recipient of the poem the extension of knowledge, and he is seen “ Syphilis” and the lover of Lucrezia Borgia, at his best as he applies the philosophical was also a pupil of Pomponazzi, and was teaching of Pomponazzi in seeking to un­ hardly more influenced by Christianity ravel natural laws from the complicated than his great teacher. When Pomponazzi’s skein of natural phenomena. The ponderous treatise on “ The Immortality of the Soul” conceits of his poems were the affectation was condemned by the Lateran Council, of a period when the most skilled writers Bembo used his influence on its author’s were but the “ apes of Cicero.” But intel­ behalf, not out of any principle of tol­ lectually he is a child of the new age and is eration, but prompted by his admiration begotten of the spirit of science in the for the literary and philosophical Qualities matrix of humanism. of the work. Bembo’s own compositions Fracastor spent the greater part of his include poems as obscene as any in litera­ life at his villa in the neighborhood of ture, and we find the same Cardinal urging Verona, devoting himself largely to study. Sadoleto to “ avoid the Epistles of St. Paul It is probable that motives of humanity, as lest his barbarous style should spoil your well as interest in the subject, moved him, taste.” as it did Copernicus, to the practice of Hardly less pagan were the two men medicine among the neighboring peasantry. bearing the name Alessandro Farnese, to It is at least certain that his accurate clinical whom other of Fracastor’s works were knowlege can only have been won by pains­ dedicated. Of these Farnese, the elder as­ taking bedside experience. He took much sumed the new-fangled heathen title of interest in geographical discovery, which he Pontifex Maximus when he ascended the followed on specially constructed globes. throne as Paul III to commence his corrupt He was a devoted student of astronomical papal career (Alessandro Farnese, 1468- and mathematical problems. He was a very di Niccold Coppernico,” Padua, 1880. German trans­ Webb’s “ Studies in the History of Natural The­ lation by Curtze in Mittheilungen des Copernicus ology,” Oxford, 1915, p.