An introduction to the history of medicine : with medical chronology, bibliographic data and test questions / by Fielding H. Garrison.

  • Garrison, Fielding H. (Fielding Hudson), 1870-1935.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to the history of medicine : with medical chronology, bibliographic data and test questions / by Fielding H. Garrison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Fracastorius. Girolamo Fracastoro (1484-1553), a Veronese of thick-set, hirsute appearance and jovial mien, who practised in the Lago di Gardo region, was at once a physician, poet, physicist, geologist, astronomer, and pathologist, and shares with Leonardo da Vinci the honor of being the first geologist to see fossil re¬ mains in the true light (1530). He was also the first scientist to refer to the magnetic poles of the earth (1543). His medical fame rests on that most celebrated of medical poems, Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus (Venice, 1530), which sums up the contemporary dietetic and therapeutic knowledge of the time, recognizes a vene¬ real cause, and gave the disease its present name; and his treatise, “De Contagione” (1546), in which he states, with wonderful clair¬ voyance, the modern theory of infection by microorganisms (semi- naria contagionum).1 Our account of Renaissance medicine may close with the works of two original characters who were not physicians. The Venetian Luigi Cornaro (1467-1566), whose Trattato della vita sobria (Padua, 1558) is probably the best treatise on personal hygiene and the “simple life” in existence; and “The Metamorphosis of Ajax” (1596) of Sir John Harington (1561-1612), the witty, graceless godson of Queen Elizabeth, who was banished from her court for writing it. The work introduces an important and indispensable improvement in sanitary engineering, but our author’s treatment of his theme is entirely in the manner of Aristophanes, Rabelais, or the Zahdarm epitaph in “Sartor Resartus,” and the garrulous, whimsical old knight possibly got his invention from Oriental sources. Carlo Ruini’s treatise on the anatomy and diseases of the horse and their treatment (1598) is usually regarded as the foundation of modern veterinary medicine. It is worth remembering that the first medical books to be printed in the new world, such as the “Opera Medicinalia” of Francesco Bravo (1570) or the “ Summa y Recopilacion de Cirugia” of Alphonso Lopez de Hinojoso (1595), were printed in the city of Mexico. 1 It is to be remembered, however, that Fracastorius nowhere refers to the latter as living organisms (contagia animata), but describes them (as if in terms of physical chemistry) as something very like our modern “colloidal systems/ ’ although he regards them as capable of reproduction in appropriate media. As between Fracastorius and Athanasius Kircher, the decision of priority in regard to the germ theory will depend upon whether the arbiter is a materialist or a vitalist. In the De Contagione, Fracastorius also gives the first authentic account of typhus fever (1546), the “tabardillo” of contemporary Spanish and Mexican writers.