Girolamo Fracastoro

Girolamo Fracastoro

Girolamo Fracastoro (1478 - 1553) Italian physician, poet, and scholar, an example of the Renaissance man. He was one of the first to propose that epidemic diseases were caused by tiny transferable particles, spreading from one person to another by means of direct or indirect contact, though he did not believe the particles themselves were alive. The name Syphilis for the disease comes from his poem "Syphilis sive morbus gallicus (Syphilis, or the French Disease)" about a shepherd boy named Syphilis, who by angering the sun god of Haiti, bought upon himself the dreaded infection. The poem also suggested mercury and guaiaco as a cure for the illness. after his death, a marble statue on an arch was erected in his honor at his native town of Verona. Legend has it that, the stone ball that he holds in his hand, symbolizing the world, would fall on the first honorable man who walks by it. Needless to say, it has not yet fallen!