Galileo’s “Disease of the bone”
It happened almost exactly five years ago. I remember this because it was the summer just before the appearance of that new star in October, 1604. I was on holiday from the university. It was a beautiful clear morning; lemon blue sky, not even a breath of wind when I and my friends Paulo and Giovanni set out from Padua on a walk into the countryside. Our destination: another friend’s villa in the sleepy hamlet of Costozza, a journey of several hours by foot. By the time we arrived we were exhausted and as you might suspect, quite hot. Our host welcomed us with some very excellent rosso from his vineyard. Naturally, we became very sleepy. So we removed most of our clothing and went to rest in a cool room to escape the most uncomfortable hours of the day. Unfortunately, while we were all asleep, a servant thoughtlessly opened a vent in our room which generated an artificial breeze, owing to the rush of a fountain that ran nearby. This wind, of course, being cold and damp, met with our lightly-clad bodies during the two-hour period we slept there. And upon awakening we all experienced severe chills and intense headaches. Paulo became gravely ill and died several days later. Giovanni lost most of his hearing during the ensuing weeks, and shortly thereafter he, too, succumbed. I was left with this disease of the bone; it’s a chronic pain—at times nearly unbearable, but during the initial onset I was totally incapacitated, flat on my back for the rest of the summer and into the fall. This at least provided me a convenient position in which to observe and contemplate that new star.