FRACASTORO [FRAcASTORIUS], GIROLAMO [HIERONY Mvs] (1483-1553), Italian physician and poet, was born at Verona. He studied at Padua and became professor of philosophy there in 1502, afterwards practising as a physician in Verona. It was by his advice that Pope Paul III., on account of the preval ence of a contagious distemper, removed the Council of Trent to Bologna. Fracastoro's theory of infection was that "infection" was due to the passage of minute bodies, capable of self-multipli cation, from the infector to the infected, a theory which bears a superficial resemblance to modern doctrine. In 1517, when the builders of the citadel of San Felice (Verona) found fossil mussels in the rocks, Fracastoro took the view—following Leonardo da Vinci—that they were the remains of animals once capable of living in the locality. He died at Casi, near Verona, on Aug. 8, 1553; and in 1559 the town of Verona erected a statue in his honour.
The principal work of Fracastoro is a kind of medical poem entitled Syphilidis, sive Morbi Gallici, libri tres (Verona, 153o), which has been often reprinted and also translated into French and Italian. His complete works were published at Venice in 1555, and his poems were collected and printed at Padua in 1728.