The manuscript notes are in two hands. The first hand has recorded philosophical paraphrases on the nature of man and of knowledge, several from St. Augustine's City of God, one from Plato's Republic, and one possibly from John Chrysostom. The second hand has paraphrased biblical passages. Some can be positively identified as being from St. Paul, for example Galatians 5:1 and Colossians 3:3. These notes may not be so much related to Fracastorus's text as to the interest of Renaissance scientists in general philosophical and cosmological questions.

Fracastoro was not only the author of the most famous of all medical poems, Syphilis sive morbus gallicus (Verona, 1530), epitomising contemporary knowledge of syphilis and recognising its venereal cause, but also of De sympathia et antipathia rerum (Venice, 1546), which contains one of the first accounts of typhus and enunciated for the first time the modern doctrine of the specific characters and infectious natures of fevers.