Girolamo Fracastoro and syphilis / [W.K. Stratman-Thomas].

  • Stratman-Thomas, W. K.
Date:
[1930]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Girolamo Fracastoro and syphilis / [W.K. Stratman-Thomas]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    2 4 Nov GIROLAMO FRACASTORO ( I47S-1^53.) --* * ~ **/ 1931 AND SYPHILIS /n m. & By W. K. Stratman-Thomas, Ph. D., M. D., D. T. M. and H. New York City 1ROUR hundred years ago (in August 1530), ^ Girolamo Fracastoro, the genial Veronese phy¬ sician, astronomer and poet, published that most interesting medical poem Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus. Dedicated to his friend, the Cinquecento pagan, Cardinal Pietro Bembo, the poem surveys, in the flowery pseudoclassical style of the period, opinions on the origin, symptoms, and treatment of the disease now known by the name Fracastoro gave to one of his poetical characters. Where Fracastoro got the word syphilis is not known. But that this name of the fictitious shep¬ herd, who Fracastoro says first contracted the ill¬ ness by defying the sun god, has become the common designation of the disease was not mere chance. The jolly Fracastoro deliberately gave the cue in the poem itself. As translated in 1686 by “England’s worst poet laureate,” Nahum Tate, the passage reads: A Shepherd once (distrust not ancient Fame) Possest these Downs, and Syphilus his Name. He first wore Buboes dreadfull to the sight, First felt strange pains and sleepless past the Night; From him the Malady receiv’d its name, The neighboring Shepherds catcht the spreading Flame. * Edited for publication by Dr. S. V. Larkey and Professor C. D. Leake from notes and material prepared by Dr. Stratman-Thomas while in London and Africa as a Guggenheim Traveling Fellow, 1928-1930. * Read before the California Medical History Seminar, at a lunchdon in honor of Dr. and Mrs. Charles Singer of London, on August 19, 1930.