Fracastoro, Girolamo

Girolamo Fracastoro (1478-1553), was an Italian physician born in Verona. He is credited with writing, in 1530, the first treatise on syphilis, in poetic form, Syphilis sive morbus Gallicus (Syphilis or the French Disease).

Around the same time, Fracastoro identified the then recently discovered Americas as Atlantis.