302 NOTES

carried from a distance by the air." Vet Fracastorius carefully
defined his use of the word for an intermediary of infection.

42 A definition of Analogy (selective affinity) is given in his On
Sympathy, p. 64, and he often assumes that the reader knows that
explanation of the relation of the agent to the substance. 'That
there may be analogy, there must be present 1) an agent with power
to act, 2) aptitude of substance, e. g. pores of the suitable shape, 3)
suitable mode of application, i. e. contaet, time, etc. See below,
Book I. Ch. 8, The Analogy of Contagions, and Book II. Ch. 9.

sIn the poem Syphilis, where the metre would not admit the
word seminaria, he always uses semina. But in the present, much
later, work he prefers seminaria, evidently because he wished to /
convey the idea of the seed—bed as well as the seeds. In prose he
uses semina only once (p. 127), apparently by inadvertence. In
every cease, he is of course echoing, but adapting for his own purpose,
the poem of Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 6. 1093 foll., who says
that "many seeds fly about bringing disease and death. — I trans—
late seminaria 'germs' as the nearest English equivalent; Fossel
translates, 'Keime'. C. and D. Singer (p. 22) say that R. Fuchs, in
1541, speaks of the semninarium of disease.

* Meunier, the French translator, ignored the word non þefore
idem in the text, and translated ^personne ne doit penser que c/ est
le möme principe"; Fossel, p. 18, reproducing, as he often does,
the errors of Meunier, translates "*mit recht niemand glauben muss
es länge das gleiche Prinzip beim Zunder vor.^ Both translators,
however, give correctly the precisely contrary statement in the
summing up of his argument by the author at the end of this chapter.
Now the whole argument of Fracastorius in Chh. 3—7 is that the
three types of seminaria confagionis that he is discussing have &
commune principtium et modus inficiendi, though they do differ in
their misfio (combination), i. e. those that infect by direct contact
are hot and moist; those that infect by fomes also are viscous and
Sï'r(ä?, ïvhile those ad distans are stronger and more subtile; see end
o . 4.

7 For the destruction of the germs by great heat or cold, see pp.
23, 193, 231.

s For the term species or simulacra in this sense, see p. 195, note 3.

9 For the movements of the germs see p. 29.  When he says that
they move in orbem, literally in a circle," he means that thus they
travel into the world, at large. See HomocerWtrica I. 9, circulo enim
et in orbem diffunduntur spiritualia.

ï'o Pliny VIII. 77 mentions this (fabulous) animal, compares it
with the basilisk, and places it near the sources of the Nile. Fra—
castorius, seeking, as always, for a material explanation of a popular
superstition, gave much thought to the catablepha (see pp. 27, 49),
and included it in a list of hard problems in his Sympa£hy Ch. 1
where he says it can kill at the distance of a mile.  It was & useful
instance of the fatal effect on the vital spirits of hostile species or
emissions.  See Introduction, p. xxxvi.