Girolamo FracastoroDied 6 Aug 1553 (born c. 1478). Italian physician, astronomer, geologist and poet who proposed a scientific germ theory for how diseases are transmitted In De contagione et contagiosis morbis et curatione (On Contagion, Contagious Diseases, and Their Cure, 1546), he described the spread of disease by so-called "seeds", that could be transported by air, upon clothing, by an animal or from one person to another. (He was extending Lucretius's earlier idea that everything was composed of small bits of atomic matter.) 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.Date of death: DSB gives 6 Aug 1553; Enc. Brit. gives 8 Aug 1553. |
