Amico Bignami (15 April 1862 – 8 September 1929) was an Italian physician, pathologist,

malariologist Malaria is a Mosquito-borne disease, mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes Signs and symptoms, symptoms that typically include fever, fatigue (medical), tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In se ...

and sceptic. He was professor of pathology at Sapienza University of Rome. His most important scientific contribution was in the discovery of transmission of human

malarial parasite ''Plasmodium'' is a genus of unicellular eukaryotes that are obligate parasites of vertebrates and insects. The life cycles of ''Plasmodium'' species involve development in a blood-feeding insect host which then injects parasites into a verteb ...

in the mosquito. With researcher

Ettore Marchiafava Ettore Marchiafava (3 January 1847 – 22 October 1935) was an Italian physician, pathologist and neurologist. He spent most of his career as professor of medicine at the University of Rome (now Sapienza Università di Roma). His works on malar ...

he described a neurological disease, which is now given the eponymous name Marchiafava–Bignami disease.

Biography

Amico Bignami was born in Bologna to Eugenia and Francesco Mazzoni. He earned his medical degree from University of Rome ( Sapienza University of Rome) in 1887. He was immediately appointed as assistant to Tommasi Crudelli in the Institute of General Pathology, where he worked until 1891. That year he joined the Institute of Pathological Anatomy under by

. In 1890, he became extraordinary professor of pathology at the University of Rome and was promoted to full professor in 1906. In 1917, he became professor of medicine, a post he occupied until his retirement in 1921. In addition from 1896 he was practising assistant physician at the Ospedale riuniti di Roma. He was interested particularly in the pathology of the brain. He discovered the clinical nature of alcoholism, now known as Marchiafava–Bignami disease. He also made pioneering work in isolation of ''Bacterium coli'' (now '' Escherichia coli'') in humans. He also contributed to the study of leukemia. He died in Rome in 1929.

Malariology

Bignami and his colleague Machiafava published a 169-page monograph ''On Summer-Autumnal Fevers ''in 1892, which was translated into English in 1894. They were the first to distinguish symptoms of ''

Plasmodium falciparum ''Plasmodium falciparum'' is a Unicellular organism, unicellular protozoan parasite of humans, and the deadliest species of ''Plasmodium'' that causes malaria in humans. The parasite is transmitted through the bite of a female ''Anopheles'' mosqu ...

'', the causative agent of tertian malaria, from benign forms. They found that the malaria parasites were spherical in nature (rather than filamentous, as generally believed), mainly intraerythrocytic (rather than free living), that the liberation of spores at segmentation (schizont rupture) caused fever, and that there were different species of malaria parasites (each with its own different characteristics, notably fever periodicity). They observed that malignant malaria was caused only by the parasite species causing aestivo-autumnal malaria. With

Giuseppe Bastianelli Giuseppe Bastianelli (25 October 1862 – 30 March 1959) was an Italian physician and zoologist who worked on malaria and was the personal physician of Pope Benedict XV. Born in Rome, Bastianelli was initially interested in chemistry, physiology ...

, he discovered that in malarial patients, it was the young (early staged) ''Plasmodium'' that caused fevers, but not the old crescent forms (gametocytes), discovered by

Alphonse Laveran Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran (18 June 1845 – 18 May 1922) was a French physician who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1907 for his discoveries of parasitic protozoans as causative agents of infectious diseases such as malaria ...

. Specifically they found that the crescent forms appeared in the second week of fever. Bignami theorised in 1896 that the mosquito can be the vector of the disease. To show this, he captured mosquitoes in areas with high incidence of malaria and had them bite healthy people. But, like Sir Ronald Ross, a British Army surgeon working in India on the same mission (following Patrick Manson's

mosquito-malaria theory Mosquito-malaria theory (or sometimes mosquito theory) was a scientific theory developed in the latter half of the 19th century that solved the question of how malaria was transmitted. The theory proposed that malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes ...

), he failed to find direct evidence. In August 1897, Ross discovered malarial parasites inside the mosquito, which indicated that the mosquito was the carrier. In 1898, Bignami,

Giovanni Battista Grassi Giovanni Battista Grassi (27 March 1854 – 4 May 1925) was an Italian physician and zoologist, best known for his pioneering works on parasitology, especially on malariology. He was Professor of Comparative Zoology at the University of Catania ...

Antonio Dionisi Antonio is a masculine given name of Etruscan origin deriving from the root name Antonius. It is a common name among Romance language-speaking populations as well as the Balkans and Lusophone Africa. It has been among the top 400 most popular male ...

and Giuseppe Bastianelli's experiments succeeded. Bignami did not hesitate to be bitten himself and to contract the disease. The three scientists presented on November 28, 1898, the results of their observations to the

Accademia dei Lincei The Accademia dei Lincei (; literally the "Academy of the Lynx-Eyed", but anglicised as the Lincean Academy) is one of the oldest and most prestigious European scientific institutions, located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Rom ...

Legacy and honors

*In 1923 Bignami was elected a member of the

. *In 1926 the academy awarded him the Santoro prize for his studies on malaria.

Works

Bignami's major works include ''Ricerche sull’anatomia patologica delle perniciose'' (1890), ''Sulle febbre malariche estivo-automnali''(1892) or ''On Summer-Autumnal Fevers'' (1894), ''La malaria e le zanzare'' (1899), ''La infezione malarica'' (1902) and with Grassi, ''Ciclo evolutivo della semilune nell' Anopheles claviger'' (1899).

References

Additional source

*Conci, C. 1975. Repertorio delle biografie e bibliografie degli scrittori e cultori italiani di entomologia. ''Mem. Soc. Ent. Ital''. 48 1969(4) 817–1069. *Conci, C. & Poggi, R. 1996. "Iconography of Italian Entomologists, with essential biographical data." ''Mem. Soc. Ent. Ital''. 75 159–382, 418 Fig.
Biography
''L'Encicopedia Italiana'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Bignami, Amico 1862 births 1929 deaths Physicians from Bologna Italian pathologists Malariologists Sapienza University of Rome alumni Academic staff of the Sapienza University of Rome Italian tropical physicians 19th-century Italian physicians 20th-century Italian physicians