| Date | 1546 |
| Author | Fracastoro |
| Contribution | Wrote that diseases were caused by invisible seminaria (seeds). |
| Reference | Bullock |
| Notes | Seeds or "germs" in original sense. A renowned epidemiologist, echoing Charles Singer, suggested that Fracastor [Fracastoro] "...had a claim to be regarded as the first scientific teacher of a doctrine all men now hold to be true" [i.e. the germ theory]. Referring to Henle's germ theory and Laveran's discovery of the malarial parasite, he added "We may then put the interval between Henle and the triumph of his ideas, which were also Fracastor's, at forty years; from Fracastor to Henle was nearly three hundred years" (Major Greenwood, in Science, Medicine and History [E. A. Underwood, ed.] Oxford Univ. Press, 1953, Vol. 2, p 501-507). Silverman points out that Fracastoro also had a theory to explain acquired immunity [not significant re Germ Theory]. |
| Category | Causation |
| Pathogen Class | General |
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