INTRODUCTION vii

Fracastorius: Birth

Fracastorius' was born at Verona about 1478.  In books of ref—
erence and in nearlyallbiographies,thedateisgiven as 1483. But
Professor Barbarani of Verona, who in the matter of chronology
is unusually conscientious, found that, in the census records
for taxes, in the Communal Archives at Verona, he is registered
in the parish of S. Agnes in 1501 as aged 23; and in 1541, in the
parish of S. Eufemia as aged 62. We may therefore conclude
that he was born about 1478.*  The long—established error as to
the date of his birth was perhaps due to a general impression that
this hale and active citizen was about 70 when he died in 1553,
whereas he was about 75. His earlier biographers admired his
precocity, but hardly faced the fact that, by their reckoning, he
must have married at 17, since in 1501, when we find him in—
stalled at the University of Padua as a Lecturer in Logic, he was
registered in Verona as the father of a son, Giambattista, aged
three months.  His father!s name was Paolo Filippo, his mother
was Camilla de Mascarelli, & well—born woman of Vicenza. It
is said that, at birth, his mouth was so small and so firmly closed
at both ends that an operation was necessary, and was performed
with a razor, cultro (onsorio. 'This is the theme of an epigram
by the famous scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484—1558) who
was his neighbor on the shore of Lake Garda till 1529, and could
have had no motive for inventing the story.s *At birth, Fra—

:I use the Latin form of his name, Hieronymus Fracastorius,
because all his medical works were in Latin and he is thus referred
to by his medical contemporaries and in general by writers on medi—
cine. 'TThe French often call him J6rome Fracastor; for English
writers he is usually Jerome Fracastor. / Bruno calls him Fracastorio,
an Italianisation of the Latin form. In contemporary poems he
is often ealled Frastorus, & more convenient form for verse, and he
uses this abbreviation in some of his own poems.

^ Massalongo, who gives a sketch of his life in a general lecture
on Italian medicine (1915), follows Barbarani in giving the date
1478, on account of the census records.

s Os Fracastorio nascenti defuit, ergo
Sedulus attenta finxit Apollo manu.
Inde hauri, medicusque ingens ingensque poeta
Et magno facies omnia plena deo.

When Fracastorius died, Scaliger wrote a book of 27 epigrams
in his honor, called Arae Fracas(oreae, Altars in honor of Fracastorius.