Hieronymo Frascatoro, generally known as Jerome Frascator, was a
physician and poet of high repute in the early part of the sixteenth
century. Frascator was born at Verona in 1483 and died near that city
in 1553. As a physician he aided the Pope, Paul III, to get the Council
of Trent removed from Germany to Italy by alarming the delegates into
believing that they were in imminent danger of an epidemic. They
therefore adjourned to Bologna. Frascator especially studied infectious
diseases, and his celebrated Diascordium, which is described in the
section entitled “The Four Officinal Capitals,” was invented as a
remedy for the Plague. His great literary fame depended principally on
a Latin poem he wrote with the now repellent title of “Syphillides,
sive Morbi Gallici,” in three books. This was published in 1530. The
author did not accept the view that this disease had been imported from
America. He held that it had been known in ancient times, and that it
was caused by a peculiar corruption of the air. His hero, Syphilis,
had given offence to Apollo, who, in revenge, had poisoned the air he
breathed. Syphilis is cured by plunging three times in a subterraneous
stream of quicksilver. The best classical scholars of the age regarded
the poem as the finest Latin work written since the days when that
language was in its full life, and they compared it appreciatively with
the poems of Virgil. The following lines will serve as a specimen:--
... nam saepius ipsi
Carne sua exutos artus, squallentia ossa
Vidimes, et foedo rosa era dehiscere hiatu
Ora, atque exiles renentia guttura voces.
The name of the disease was acquired from this poem, and though it
has a Greek form and appearance, no ancient derivative for it can be
suggested. Frascator also wrote a poem on hydrophobia.