Girolamo Fracastoro's Germ Theory.
On August 6 1553 an Italian physician poet and scholar in mathematics geography and astronomy Girolamo Fracastoro passed away. Fracastoro subscribed to the philosophy of atomism and rejected appeals to hidden causes in scientific investigation. He is known for his proposal of a scientific germ theory for how diseases are transmitted. Fracastoro's ideas helped make unpopular public health measures more accepted, such as destroying animals, or thorough cleaning or burning of infected possessions during a plague. His ideas preceded the work of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch by more than 3 centuries. Girolamo Fracastoro was born in Verona and was able to study in Padua literature mathematics astronomy philosophy and medicine. In Padua he became a lecturer of logic and later conciliarius anatomicus. He was elected to the College of Physicians in 1505 but moved to Incaffi after a plague outbreak. There, Fracastoro started working on his famous poem Syphilis and in 1546 he wrote De contagione et contagiosis morbis et eorum curatione libri tres (The three books on contagion, contagious diseases and their cure), which highly increased his fame as a figure in the history of medicine . The exact origin of syphilis is not clear, even on this day. Fracastoro however, believed in contrast to contemporary scientists, that the disease had existed previously but had been forgotten. Many believed that syphilis had been brought back from the Americas by Columbus had been spread throughout Spain and France and had been brought to Italy with the invasion of Charles VIII in 1494 Fracastoro assumed that syphilis resurfaced because of certain astrological conditions. In his opinion, the disease was spread by some kind of 'seed' in the air, which many historians believe to be a forerunner or germ theory According to Fracastoro the body is made up of numerous invisible particles that are passed in contagion, corrupting the new body. He distinguishes three different types of contagion. Contagion by direct contact through the air, and by carriers such as soiled clothing and linen. He decided, that syphilis belonged to the second category and explained that the 'seeds' originated in the air, entered the body, germinated, and became ready for contagion. Fracastoro furtherly asumed that the use of cold, drying-out medicines guaiacum might cure the disease . Fracastoro's explanation of the transmission of syphilis and further contagious diseases was seen as a pioneering perspective in microbiology. Although microorganisms had been mentioned as a possible cause of disease by the Roman scholar Marcus Varro in the 1st century BC Fracastoro’s was the first scientific statement of the true nature of contagion, infection disease germs and modes of disease transmission theory was widely praised during his time, but its influence decrea, and it fell into general disrepute until an experimental version was later elaborated by German physician Robert Koch and French chemist Louis Pasteur . At yovisto, you may be interested in a Hollywood-produced melodramatic short film that deals with prophylaxis, diagnosis and clinical treatment of syphilis.