Opera Omnia is the collected works, published posthumously in 1574, of the Italian poet and scientist Girolamo Fracastoro. The book is part of the collection of Silvanus P. Thompson purchased in 1917 by the IET. Thompson was an avid collector of scientific books and added volumes in numerous disciplines and European languages to his collection during his life.
We can see from the contents that this edition contains two of Fracastoro’s most famous works De Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis and Syphilis sive morbus gallicus. Also in this edition towards the end are his Biblical poem Joseph and a collection of miscellaneous poetry titled Carmina.
The book is bound in vellum and has remained in good condition providing an overview of Fracastoro’s work as both a poet and a scientist. Particularly noteworthy is the initials of the English poet and theologian Samuel Taylor Coleridge on the title page in the top right hand corner. Probably best known for his works The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, Coleridge was one of the founding figures in the artistic and intellectual movement known as Romanticism in England and was an influential member of the group of poets known as The Lake Poets who lived and worked in the Lake District and as well as Coleridge, included William and Dorothy Wordsworth and Robert Southey.
This book would once have been in the library of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and then in that of Lord Coleridge, his great nephew, who was a lawyer and politician for the Liberal Party. The library at his home in Ottery St Mary in Devon contained over 12,000 volumes. It’s unclear how Thompson came to acquire the book.
Who was Girolamo Fracastoro?
Girolamo Fracastoro (1476–1553) was an Italian physician, poet, and scholar in various disciplines whose ideas on disease transmission informed modern epidemiology. He contributed to medicine, astronomy, and literature, but his most significant legacy is his early theory on contagion, which anticipated germ theory. Fracastoro was born in Verona, Italy, in 1476. He studied at the University of Padua, where he became a professor of medicine. He spent much of his life living near Lake Garda and died in 1553 in Verona.
In his 1546 work De Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis, Fracastoro proposed that diseases spread through invisible particles which he called “seminaria” or seeds of disease. He suggested that these particles could be transmitted through direct contact, contaminated objects, or through the air. This was counter to the generally accepted theory that disease was a cause of poor air quality or supernatural causes. This was known as “miasma theory” and remained prevalent alongside Fracastoro’s contagion theory well into the 1800s and would not be discarded in favour of germ theory until the 1860s. Fracastoro does not state whether these “seeds” are living things as we would know germs to be or chemicals capable of being transmitted from body to body. For this reason, some academics believe the influence of Fracastoro has been overstated and that modern ideas have been fitted onto his work without actually being found in his writing.
Fracastoro is also known for coining the term “syphilis” in his epic poem Syphilis sive morbus gallicus (“Syphilis or the French Disease”). In the poem a farmhand Syphilus insults Sol Pater, the god of the Sun, and is punished by him with the disease.
Fracastoro helped shape the future of medicine and public health by devising his theory of contagion. His work is an important step toward understanding the spread of diseases and paving the way for later scientists like Louis Pasteur whose work confirmed the microbial origins of disease.
By Daniel Simkin,
Deputy Library Manager
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