xvi INTRODUCTION

Ileeus, the Syrian victim of the malady, and his visit to the founts
of mercury beneath Etna.  He advised the author to omit this
part and to expand his panegyric of guaiae, which was already
a fashionable remedy for the disease. Fracastorius could not
bring himself to omit Ileeus, but in the next five years he rear—
ranged and enlarged the poem, adding a third Book on the tree
hyacus, and the treatment of syphilis by guaiac. Though he,
says in Con»fagion that quicksilver is the best remedy, he ad—
vises the use of guaiac in the first place. 'There exists a frag—
ment of 13 verses which is perhaps the original Introduction ad—
dressed to Bembo. 'This was superseded by the present longer
Introduction of 23 verses which retains many of the earlier
phrases. In both versions of the poem, Pope Leo X. who died
in 1521, is referred to as living.

G. M. Giberti

In 1528, Fracastorius acquired a new and powerful clerical
patron in Giberti who had been made Bishop of Verona by Pope
Clement VII, and was presented by him about 1534 with a villa
at Malcesine. Giberti was himself a scholar and a friend of
scholars, and Fracastorius wrote an Italian sonnet expressing the
hope of better things for Verona under the new bishop. He went
to live at his new villa and sent to his patron a present of lemons
and fish from the small estate, together with a Latin poem relating
how the god Saturn had turned into white trout in Lake Garda
some insolent boatmen (an echo of the Homeric Hymn to Diony—
sus), and turned their boat to stone (an echo of the incident in
the Odyssey of the ship of the Phaeacians).  Giberti was recalled
to Rome by the new Pope Paul III (Alessandro Farnese) and from
that time was on less intimate terms with Fracastorius. 'The
villa was almost certainly given back to Giberti before the latter's
death in 1542; at any rate it is not mentioned again.

Typhus in Italy

In 1528 there was an epidemic in Italy of lenticular fever
(exanthematic typhus) which, Fracastorius says,' aroused much
discussion among the doctors, since, until the earlier outbreak
in 1505, it was unknown to his generation, "though known to
our ancestors.^ It was his experience of this epidemic that

: Book II. Ch. 6. .