Chapter 4 : Girolamo Fracastoro and Contagion in Renaissance Medicine

Abstract:

By the mid-1500s, accessibility to Latin-translated, ancient Greek medical texts and the commentaries condemning Avicenna led to a decreased reliance on his work in Western Europe, although by no means was the Canon of Medicine disregarded. The decreased dependence on the Canon led to disregard of many of its innovative concepts, including contagion, in Western Europe. To the modern reader, a disregard of the concept of contagion seems hard to reconcile with the presence of two diseases of the period: plague and syphilis. The Black Death continued its periodic appearances during the Renaissance. In 1525 Girolamo Fracastoro completed an earlier version of the poem, Syphilis sive morbus Gallicus. For the next 16 years after the publication of Syphilis sive morbus Gallicus, Fracastoro worked on a book that he asserted was "not as a poet but as a doctor," De Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis et Eorum Cura-tione, or On Contagion, Contagious Disease and Their Cure, published in 1546. Precisely where his ideas emerged for De Contagione is in doubt. Fracastoro's fame from his epic poem helped ensure the initial publication in 1546 and at least two additional printings of De Contagione by 1555. The reaction to Fracastoro's De Contagione in his own time ranged from hostile to favorable, but even the positive responses were tepid. For all De Contagione's limitations, it is extraordinary how well Fracastoro described modes of transmission for microorganisms, having no idea of their existence.