Girolamo Fracastoro and the Origin of the Etymology of Syphilis - Advances in Historical Studies

AHS > Vol.6 No.3, September 2017

Advances in Historical Studies

Volume 6, Issue 3 (September 2017)

ISSN Print: 2327-0438 ISSN Online: 2327-0446

Google-based Impact Factor: 0.45 Citations

Girolamo Fracastoro and the Origin of the Etymology of Syphilis ()

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Download as PDF (Size: 280KB) PP. 104-112

DOI: 10.4236/ahs.2017.63008 1,078 Downloads 2,439 Views Citations

Author(s)

Luiz Alberto Peregrino Ferreira¹, Mariano Barthe Dupont², Gerolamo Fracastoro³, Maurizio Rippa Bonati⁴

Affiliation(s)

¹Departamento de Análises Clínicas, Centro de Ciências da Saúde, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brasil.
²Independent Translator, Florianópolis, Brasil.
³Scuola di Medicina e Chirurgia, Università Degli Studi di Verona, Verona, Italia.
⁴Dipartimento di Scienze Cardiologiche, Toraciche e Vascolari, Università Degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italia.

ABSTRACT

In 1530, Girolamo Fracastoro, an illustrious Italian physician and poet, published a book about a disease that was then known as the “French disease”, which he named syphilis. Fracastoro’s book, Syphilis sive morbus Gallicus, was written as a poem in hexameters verses, using figures from Greek mythology that provided facts about the Spanish discovery of the New World in 1492. A thorough literature review of the historical facts and mythological figures mentioned in Fracastoro’s book enabled us to complete an in-depth analysis of the poem and understand some its smallest details. Hence, we propose a new hypothesis that the origin of the term Syphilis is based on the name Sypilus as well as the appearance of people who suffer from the disease.

KEYWORDS

Girolamo, Fracastoro, French Disease, Syphilis, New World

Share and Cite:

Ferreira, L. , Dupont, M. , Fracastoro, G. and Bonati, M. (2017) Girolamo Fracastoro and the Origin of the Etymology of Syphilis. Advances in Historical Studies, 6, 104-112. doi: 10.4236/ahs.2017.63008.

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