Book in Italian.

Hardback edition. Size: 14.4 x 22 cm. 54 pages.

This book contains a number of the poems written by Girolamo Fracastoro. This edition, on the life of and containing a number of the odes by Girolamo Fracastoro, in Franceso Pellegrini’s annoted version, was first printed by the Stamperia Valdonega in October 1953.
Girolamo Fracastoro (Verona 1478 – Incaffi 1553) was a doctor, philosopher, astronomer, geographer, theologian and expert on Italian literature. He was a colleague and friend of Copernicus and he also worked as professor of Logic at Padua University. He was Pope Paul III’s chief physician. He was one of the founders of modern-day pathology. In his studies as a scientist, he was the first to hypothesize and prove that infections are caused by disease-carrying germs that could multiply inside the body and infect others through breathing or other forms of contact. In the bibliography of his scientific works, his 1530 “Syphilis sive de morbo gallico” (“Syphilis, or the French disease” – which was from then on known simply as syphilis) written in verse form, and the treatise “De contagione et contagiosis morbis” (On Contagion and Contagious Diseases), published in 1546, stand out. His treatise on contagion formed the basis for modern pathology.
As an astronomer he, along with Pietro Apiano, was the first to discover that the tails of comets always point in the opposite direction the comet is going in relation to the sun. In 1538 he described an instrument that could be used for astronomy, which was constructed by Galileo Galilei some decades later: the telescope. In the same year he wrote the work on astronomy entitled “Homocentrica” dedicated to Paolo III.
Fracastoro also wrote three philosophical dialogues: “Naugerius sive de Poetica”, “Turrius sive de Intellectione” and the unfinished “Fracastorius sive de Anima”.