INTRODUCTION liii

briefer comments. Bruno assigns to him such statements as
would be made by an atomist, e. g. that the countless worlds
in infinite space are made up of atoms that move incessantly
and pass from body to body and from world to world.

The MSS.

"The MSS. of Fracastorius, including his De Stellis (a youthful
work superseded by Homocentrica), and many notes and frag—
ments, were presented, early in the last century, by Count
Aventino Fracastoro then the head of this tenacious family,
to the Biblioteca Capitolare in the Palazzo dei Canonici at
Verona. 'This Library possesses many valuable MSS.; it was
there that, in 1816, Niebuhr discovered the Institutes of Gaius.
The Library of the Communal Archives at Verona, the Biblioteca,
Communale, is surprisingly poor in Fracastoriana, and is the
last place in which to glean information about him or his burial—
place, though the name of Count Aventino Fracastoro is con—
spicuous on a tablet at the entrance, as one of the modern bene—
factors of the Library. William Osler writes in 1909; ^We
spent the day at Verona.. . .They had not even a copy of Fracas—
torius' poems in the Library'.  His handwriting, to judge from
the facsimiles in that Library, is very small, and at first sight,
illegible, and calls for a magnifying glass.

Translations

It remains to say something about the translations of the
De Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis et eorum Curatione' that
have preceded the present work. Alfred Fournier, whose
Traitement de Syphilis (reprinted, 1909), is still used by medical
students at Paris, translated into French, as an appendix to his
version of the poem Syphihs (with Latin text), the three
prose chapters from Contagion, Books II, III that deal with
syphilis; for these he does not give the Latin text.  His version
is too free, and, as he always desires to shovw that the syphiliog—
raphers of the l16th century forestalled, to a great extent, the
19th century investigators, he has a misleading habit of using
in his translation, modern terminology such as was unknown
to Fracastorius. But his Notes on medical terms are often

: In some of the later editions, Confagtonibus replaces Confagione

in the title. 'This is certainly incorrect.  Meunier prints Con—
tagionibus but translates by La Contagion.