NOTES

BQOOK I

: In the Dedication, p. B, he says that without his commentary
On ihe Sympathy and Antipathy of Things, which he has written
as a Preface, the nature of contagions cannot be clearly investigated
and demonstrated.  For &a description of this much neglected treatise,
of which I have found no translation, see Introduction, p. xxxiv.

: Inficere, to tinge, stain, and hence spoil and corrupt.

s Mistio is a technical mediaeval term for the manner and pro—
portion in which the qualities of the four elements, earth, air, fire
and water are combined in any thing, all matter being regarded as
a misfio of these elements. See p. 15 for his description of a 'strong
combination', and the reference to O. Sympath/, p. 69, where
he says that quicksilver (he never uses the word mercury), which
will not mix with other liquids, is an example of a 'strong combina—
tion'.

41 have throughout retained in the translation the word fomes
(pl. fomites) for which there is no good English equivalent such as
is the French 'foyer'!, used by Meunier. Fossel translates 'Zun—
der', tinder, which is the common meaning of the word as used by
Fracastorius himself when he speaks of the new invention of fire—
arms, etc. In the 18£h cent. fomes was used of the morbific matter
of a disease; e. g. Gernt. Mag. 1773, (HI this putrid ferment could be
corrected, . . . the fomes of the disease could likewise be removed''
(Oxford Dict. Fomes), but this use is obsolete. 'The rare English
word fomite' as used by Sir Richard Burton in 1859, *This must be
an efficacious fomite of cutaneous and pectoral disease,' is a linguis—
tic malformation. I have preserved in this translation the original
word fomes, which, according to Osler, Fracastorius was the first
to use in this sense, though the idea was of course familiar long before
him.  He means by fomes, "any porous substance capable of absorb—
ing and retaining contagious effluvia"; the word is derived from the
Latin foveo, cherish, or foster. 'To use the Latin focus, 'hearth',
as some writers do, to translate fomes, is misleading because we
have now other associations with that word. A not unusual mis—
understanding of the term fomes occurs in H. O. Taylor!s Thowgh£
and Ezpression in the Sixteenth Century, Vol. II, p. 322, in & brief
notice of Fracastorius' contribution to the theory of infection:**. . .
the fomites or sparks of infection may be transmitted by intermediate
agents, garments for example; in still others the fomuWes may be

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