Note 85 — MEDICINE

The ancients knew almost nothing of infection as applied specifically to disease. All early peoples—including Greeks and Romans—believed in the transmission of qualities from object to object. Thus purity and impurity and good and bad luck were infections, and diseases were held to be infections in that sense. But there is little evidence in the belief of the special infectivity of disease as such in antiquity. Some few diseases are, however, unequivocally referred to as infectious in a limited number of passages, e. g. ophthalmia, scabies, and phthisis in the περι διαφορας πυρετων, On the differentiae of fevers, K. vii, p. 279. The references to infection in antiquity are detailed by C. and D. Singer, ‘The scientific position of Girolamo Fracastoro’, Annals of Medical History, vol. i, New York, 1917.