FRACASTORUS - Operum , pars prior-posterior-Rare scientific book, illustrated - 1621

PHILOSOPHY; MEDICINE; ASTRONOMY; POETRY) Girolamo FRACASTORO (1478-1553)
Hieronymi Fracastorii veronensis Operum Pars prior Philosophica & Medica continens, quorum elenchum pagina sequens indicat. Accessit huic postremae editioni Index rerum ac verborum memorabilium locupletissimus. Hieronymi Fracastorii veronensis Operum Pars Posterior. Astronomicca continens, figuris quàm plurimis illustrata ... Hieronymi Fracastorii Poetarum nostri saeculi verè Principis Poemata ... Genevae Apud Samuelem Crispinum, 1621.
§ 3 parts in one volume, 8vo (166x101); [39], 657, [31] pp.; [16], 235, [5} pp.; 95, [1] pp. Woodcut printer's device on title page, woodcut head- and tail-pieces and initials, several schematic woodcut illustrations. Roman and Italic fonts. The title page of the second part and the Poemata is a simple half-title. Ownership signature dated 1625, some hand-written annotation in an ancient hand. Slightly later calf, double gilt fillet on plates, gilt spine. Binding a little worn with labelled title, slight stains on spine and back cover. Unimportant foxing in places, a nice and crisp copy, complete under alla respects.
Fracastoro was an Italian physician, poet, astronomer, and geologist; he is best known for his Homocentricorum sive de stellis (Concerning Homocentrics, or, on the Stars), where he attempted to devise a mathematical theory of planetary motions and for his account of the syphilis, disease which he named and for which he “proposed a scientific germ theory of disease more than 300 years before its empirical formulation by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch. ... He made an intense study of epidemic diseases, and, while in the service of Pope Paul III at the Council of Trent (1545-63), he provided the medical justification for the removal of the council to the papal state of Bologna by pointing out the danger of plague in the north Italian town of Trento.” (Britannica). He also recognised the true nature of fossils shells, described an epidemic in cattle (now recognized as foot-and-mouth disease) and wrote poems on different subjects. Fracastoro’s complete works were first published in 1555 , gaining large fame and going through several editions afterwards.
Ref: ENRICO PERUZZI Fracastoro, Girolamo In Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani; Enciclopedia Britannica (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Girolamo-Fracastoro); PESAPANE, F., MARCELLI, S., & NAZZARO, G.. Hieronymi Fracastorii: the Italian scientist who described the "French disease". In: Anais Brasileiros de Dermatologia, 2015, 90(5), pp. 684-686 (https://doi.org/10.1590/abd1806-4841.20154262); PIETRO DANIEL OMODEO Heavenly Animation as the Foundation for Fracastoro’s Homocentrism: Aristotelian-Platonic Eclecticism beyond the School of Padua In: HOPOS, 2021, 11(2), pp. 585-603 (https://hdl.handle.net/10278/3755369)