xxii INTRODUCTION

three reasons. Its ravages were too widespread, and it broke
out simultaneously in several countries; he eould eite many
eases in the early period of persons who were afflicted sponta—
neously, without any contaect whatever; finally, before its coming,,
there was a conjunction of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, & pheno—
menon that regularly brings in its train inundations, earth—
quakes and maladies.!' 'The original agent and seat of the
distemper (principtum sedesque mali) must be the air, which
easily suffers corruption and becomes charged with con/ages?
novas. Two centuries earlier, the plagues which began in
India and spread through Europe followed such a conjunection
of the planets.

Causes

Was the contagion due to vapors^ from the earth, or were
these engendered above? ^ This is hard to decide, for the nature
of contagions is strange and varied. He instances, with more
detail than in CorWZagion, specia!l pests that attack  certain
vegetables and animals, especially a distemper that attacked
goats only. 'The semina of certain maladies rarely emerge,
e. g. of elephantiasis, unknown in Italy. Such a contagion is
this,5 which attacks only man.* The indications and symp—

 

de la Isl&'s Tracfado, Wamado Fructo de todos los Sanctos, contra
et mal serpeniino, venido de la Isla espanola, which, though of
uncertain date, was written about 1506, and long antedated the
first version of SyphiJs. See Haeser, Vol. III. p. 281. Nine years
after the publication of Syphilis, when he was working on Conia—
gion, Fracastorius wrote to Rannusio, Feb. 16th, 1539, asking for
information about Hispaniola, what maladies exist there, especially
such as are contagious, and whether they have guaiac.

: These arguments are repeated in Contagion, p. 151.

* On aecount of the metre, which often limits his terminology in
this poem, he cannot write contagto, hence he uses confages; similarly,
he cannot write seminaria, but only semina; or the plural of pustula,
for which he gives achores. So Lucretius must use the purely
poetical form pesfilitas, for pestilentia, which will not scan.

sThe Black Death of 1348, immortalised in literature by the
Decameron of Boccaccio, who says it was either due to the influence
of the celestial bodies, or was a direct visitation of God to punish sin.

4I have not found the term 'miasma! in his medical works.

5 It is to be noted that he does not use the word 'syphilis' until
Book III, after the tale of the shepherd from whose name the word
is derived.

6 This is of course the modern view, but J. C. Scaliger, the friend