focus of infection—in which category he places tuberculosis, elephantiasis, and similar diseases; and 3, Those which infect not only by direct contact, or through the agency of a residuary centre or focus of infection, but also those which are capable of spreading their infective elements over wide areas—for instance, the pestilential fevers, certain ophthalmias, variola, etc. (From Viktor Fossel's version of Fracastoro's treatise published in Leipzig in 1910.)
Speaking of tuberculosis (called by him "phthisis"),
Fracastoro says that it is astonishing for how great a
length of time the virus of this disease retains its infective
power. "It has been noted, for example, that in quite a
number of instances the clothes worn by a tuberculous
patient have communicated the disease to a healthy individual
as late as two years subsequently to the date at
which they were removed from the original tuberculous
individual." The same power of communicating infection,
he continues, may reside in such other objects as the bed,
the walls and the floor of the room in which a tuberculosis
patient has died. Under these circumstances, he adds, we
are obliged to assume that germs of this infective disease
have remained attached to the different objects mentioned.
Fracastoro was born in Verona, Italy, of parents who belonged to the patrician class and were in easy circumstances. He studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Padua, and was quite prepared, on reaching the age of twenty, to pass the examinations required of candidates for the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Just at this time, however, Padua was not a safe place of residence, owing to the war that was threatened between the Emperor Maximilian the First and the Republic of Venice. Accordingly Fracastoro took his degree at the newly established Academy of Pordenone, in what is known to-day as the Province of Udine (northeast of Venice); and shortly afterward, upon the death of his father, he returned to Verona and began the practice of medicine. As he quickly gained the confidence of the people, he very soon found himself in a sufficiently prosperous condition to warrant him in retaining possession of the family residence, which
