Fracastoro and Henle: a re-appraisal of their contribution to the concept of communicable diseases.

IT HAS BECOME part of the canon of medical history that Girolamo Fracastoro [Hieronymus Fracastorius] (1478-1553) and Jacob Henle (1809-1885) each made fundamental contributions, separated by three centuries, to the understanding of the role of living micro-organisms in the etiology of communicable diseases. Fracastoro published his De contagione . . . in 1546,' only three years after two works that are veritable cornerstones of biological and physical science: the De humani corporis fabrica ... of Andreas Vesalius and the De revolutionibus ... of Copernicus. The fundamental importance of both these works is incontestable, and claims have been made for De contagione that would seem to place it in the same category. For example, Fielding H. Garrison wrote in 1910 that it "contains the first scientific statement of the true nature of contagion, of infection, of disease germs and the modes of transmission of infectious diseases".8 Later, Garrison asserted that Fracastoro "states with wonderful clairvoyance, the modern germ theory of disease".4 Arturo Castiglione, according to his English translator E. B. Krumbhaar, expressed the view that De contagione . . . "best exhibits the scientific vision" of Fracastoro and "places him among the great biologists of his time".5 As will be seen later, it is very difficult to equate such statements with what Fracastoro actually wrote. Henle's publication of 1840 on "miasms and contagions and on miasmaticcontagious diseases"6 has won encomia that are no more restrained. For Miller and Prausnitz7 in 1905, this work showed Henle's "marvellous perspicacity",8 and a 1 Norman Howard-Jones, O.B.E., M.R.C.S., LR.C.P., Formerly Director, Division of Editorial and Reference Services, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland. (Present address: 28 chemin Colladon, 1209 Geneva, Switzerland.) This paper is based on work done during the tenure in 1971-72 of an appointment as Visiting Scientist, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Public Health Service, Department of Health Education and Welfare, USA. ' H. Fracastorius, De sympathia et antipathia rerum. libri III. De contagione et contagiosis morbis et eorum curatione, English translation by W. C. Wright with parallel Latin text. New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1930. s Fielding H. Garrison, 'Fracastorius, Athanasius Kircher and the Germ Theory of disease', Science, 1910, 31: 500. ' Fielding H. Garrison, An introduction to the history of medicine, Philadelphia and London, 4th ed., W. B. Saunders, 1929. 6 Arturo Castiglione, A history of medicine. Translated from the Italian and edited by E. B. Krumbhaar, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1941. [[J.] Henle, Pathologische Untersuchungen, Berlin, A. Hirschwald, 1840. 7 P. Th. Miller and W. Prausnitz, in Max Neuburger and Julius Pagel, Handbuch der Geschichte der Medizin, Jena, Gustav Fischer, Bd. 3, 1905. "bewunderungswlJrde Scharfsinn". 61