TITLE:
Girolamo Fracastoro and the Origin of the Etymology of Syphilis
AUTHORS:
Luiz Alberto Peregrino Ferreira, Mariano Barthe Dupont, Gerolamo Fracastoro, Maurizio Rippa Bonati
KEYWORDS:
Girolamo, Fracastoro, French Disease, Syphilis, New World
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Historical Studies,
Vol.6 No.3,
September
21,
2017
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.