Circa 1478-1553
Astronomer, Physician, And Poet

French Disease. Girolamo Fracastoro was a "Renaissance man" both in the banal sense of his historical context and in the broader meaning of an active intellect with a broad range of cultural interests and achievements His reputation as a scholar has faded since the sixteenth century, when his contributions to mathematical astronomy and poetry were noted, and if he is remembered at all by historians, it is for his poem called Syphilis sive morbus gallicus (Syphilis, or the French Disease, 1530), which gave a new name to a disease that was new to late-Renaissance observers

Stargazing. Fracastoro was a younger son of a wealthy family of the northern Italian town of Verona and was schooled at home in Latin literature and philosophy by his father before being sent to the University of Padua As an undergraduate, Fracastoro studied literature, mathematics, and...