FRACASTORO, Girolamo De sympathia et antipathia rerum liber unus. De contagione et contagiosis morbis et curatione libri III. Venice, heirs of Lucantonio Giunta, 1546
4to (205 x 157 mm), ff. [4] 76 [4, including terminal blank], with woodcut printer's device on title and colophon leaf and one woodcut in text; a fine, crisp, clean copy, bound with two other medical works from the same press, in contemporary limp vellum, paper label on spine. £4500
First edition, the first work on on the 'germ theory' of contagious diseases. Fracastoro's 'most important medical treatise, De contagione, consists of a short theoretical discourse on sympathy and antipathy in physics and a longer, more practical account of contagion and contagious diseases. Here, for the first time, was a clear description of the spread of disease by seminaria contagionum, the seeds of infection- the suggestion of the germ theory.
'De contagione is arranged in three "books". The first explained the mechanism of contagion, how seminaria can be carried a distance, and why only some diseases are contagious. In the second book he wrote about a series of contagious diseases. Fracastoro had made careful observations; he differentiated smallpox from measles, gave the earliest precise description of typhus, and showed that tuberculosis was contagious. He discussed rabies and syphilis and dealt with the differential diagnosis of contagious skin diseases. Finally, in the third book, he outlined the treatment of diseases covered in book two and commented on the spread and control of epidemics' (LeFanu, Notable medical books).
'In this treatise on epidemiology Fracastoro hypothesized that contagious diseases were caused by minute particles, spontaneously generated from certain types of putrefaction and possessing the faculties of propagation and movement. He illustrated the three means by which contagion can be spread: by simple contact, as in scabies and leprosy; by fomites or inanimate carriers, such as clothing or sheets; and at a distance without direct contact, as in plague, smallpox and like diseases, whose transmission he attributed to the action of the air, denying the widespread belief in the influence of occult powers' (Norman catalogue).
This copy is bound with two minor medical works from the same press: Giovanni Antonio Sicco, De optimo medico, 1551, and Julius Alexandrinus, Antargenterica pro Galeno, 1546.
Adams F821; Durling 1636; Garrison and Morton 2528; LeFanu Notable medical books p. 23; Norman catalogue 827; NUC: NcD NcU CtY KyLxT PPC NNAM ICJ KU-M N DNLM
£4500
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