FACTOID #151: The five countries with the highest coffee consumption are also the five countries whose citizens trust one another the most. Coincidence? Probably.
Girolamo Fracastoro (Fracastorius) (1478‑1553) was an Italian physician, scholar and poet.
Born in Verona, later educated at Padua, he lived and practised in his hometown. In 1546 he proposed that epidemic diseases are caused by transferable seedlike entities that could transmit infection by direct or indirect contact or even without contact over long distances.
The name for syphilis is derived from his poem from 1530 which can be regarded as the first treatise on the disease. His 1546 book also gave the first description for typhus. Homocentrica (1538)
References
De Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis (1546), by Girolamo Fracastoro
Fracastoro's scientific thought culminated and concluded with De contagione et contagiosis morbis et curatione (1546), which assures him a lasting place in the history of epidemiology.
Fracastoro was a humanist poet, and some of his medical works, including Syphilis, are in poetry.
Fracastoro dedicated Syphilis to Cardinal Pietro Bembo, Secretary of Briefs to Leo X. Bembo asserted that the dedication was the most precious gift he had ever received.
GirolamoFracastoro, 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.
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.
Fracastoro married Elena de Clavis around 1500 with whom he had a daughter and four sons.
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