306 NOTES

^48 For such immunity see note 21.

49 For the Italian dread of south wind see p. 269; Montanus, Con—
sidium 299, forbids the opening of south windows, and Mundella,
Letter 16, To Fracastorius, dated 1541, says ^the plague follows on
south winds and copious rains.^ See Celsus II.1. Burton, Ana£omy
of Melancholy, '/The South wind is unwholesome, putrefying, and
makes men subject to disease./?

so For the danger from inundations see p. 67. He never uses
the word miasma, which the Arabs had taught men to fear as &
result of inundations. Leoniceno, De Morbo Gallico (1497), de—
scribes a prodigious inundation of the Tiber at Rome which result—
ed in a general putrefaction of the air and soil, and says that it was
one of the causes of the epidemic of syphilis.

s: For the effects of diet see p. 111; plague from tainted food, p.
115; elephantiasis from a diet of pork, and avoided by a milk diet,
p. 107.

52 Fracastorius' habit of lapsing into verse in his prose treatises
is especially shown in his philosophical dialogues, e. g. the De Poefica,
which is interspersed with lyries; we may be sure that the present
verses are his own.