Girolamo Fracastoro

Girolamo Fracastoro (Latin: Hieronymus Fracastorius; c. 1476–1478 – 6 August 1553) was an Italian physician, poet, and scholar in mathematics, geography and astronomy. Fracastoro subscribed to the philosophy of atomism, and rejected appeals to hidden causes in scientific investigation.

Fracastoro was born in Verona, Republic of Venice and educated at Padua where at 19 he was appointed professor at the University. On account of his eminence in the practice of medicine, he was elected physician of the Council of Trent. A bronze statue was erected in his honor by the citizens of Padua, while his native city commemorated their great compatriot by a marble statue. He lived and practised in his hometown. In 1546 he proposed that epidemic diseases are caused by transferable tiny particles or "spores" that could transmit infection by direct or indirect contact or even without contact over long distances. In his writing, the "spores" of diseases may refer to chemicals rather than to any living entities.

He appears to have first used the Latin word fomes, meaning tinder, in this sense in his essay on contagion, De Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis published in 1546: "I call fomites [from the Latin fomes, meaning "tinder"] such things as clothes, linen, etc., which although not themselves corrupt, can nevertheless foster the essential seeds of the contagion and thus cause infection.".

His theory remained influential for nearly three centuries, before being superseded by a fully developed germ theory.

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