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Ettore Marchiafava. 1847–1935
425
OBITUARY. ETTORE
MARCHIAFAVA. 1847-1935.
On 24th October, Professor MARCHIAFAVAdied serenely in Rome in his 88th year. Physicians of great wisdom, high integrity and warm humanity have the special reward of being beloved as well as admired. MARCHIAFAVA was the personal physician of three Popes and of the Royal House of Savoy, but he was particularly the physician of the poor people of Rome. He was active and untiring even in his extreme old age in every move to improve medical assistance and promote measures for the prevention of disease, so that at his simple funeral service the church was unable to hold the people of every class --Senators, members of the Government, doctors, scientists, labourers and sisters of charity--who came to pay tribute to a great citizen as well as a great scientist. He had been made Senator of Italy in 1913. To the throng of his old students he was both an investigative pathologist and a friendly, enthusiastic teacher, striving always to link the anatomical with the clinical picture of disease. He became full Professor in the University of Rome at 36, retiring in 1922 at the age of 75. He wrote and spoke with charm and clarity, and possessed a wide humanistic culture, being especially at home in Latin and Greek. To the world, of course, he was one of the foremost malariologists, a member of that famous Italian group wkich included GOLGI, CELLI, GRASSI, BIGNAMI and BASTIANELLI,and which at the turn of the last century, developed the fundamental discoveries of LAVERAN and Ross, building the structure of our present knowledge of the Plasmodium species and their transmission by a particular genus of mosquito. To MARCHIAFAVAbelongs the honour of describing after patient research the forms and life cycle of P. falciparum, noting first the pigment in 1879 before the parasite itself was discovered, identifying the ring forms in 1883 and finally (1889) correlating the whole developmental cycle of the parasite with the course of estivo-autumnal fever, just as GOLCI had done with P. vivax and P. malariae. In 1902, with BIGNAMI he published his great book La Infezione Malarica. This was a fundamental work which no malariologist to-day can afford to neglect. As a research worker and as a clinician MARCHIAFAVA was sternly methodical and exact, and hence this accurate record of his observations has not been rendered obsolete by the advance of knowledge, but to use ST. BEUVE'S definition of a classic, remains " easily contemporaneous with all time." The jealousies and bitter polemics which characterized, for some
,~0~
ETTORE MARCIIIAFAVA
curious reason, the early history of malaria discovery, left MARCHIAFAVA untouched. There was an unmistakable modesty, integrity and highmindedness about him that in the evening of his life provided him with a multitude of friends and no enemies.
He was elected to many Italian and foreign scientific groups in recognition of his scientific attainments, and was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from its foundation in 1907. He went to London in 1926 to receive the Manson Medal from this Society. He was active mentally and physically to the end, and a frequent visitor to the library of the Malaria Experiment Station in Rome, helpful and unassuming always as becomes a great man. L. W. }{ACKETT.
,~S~~'~ /fY
To face page 425.
OBITUARY. ETTORE
MARCHIAFAVA. 1847-1935.
On 24th October, Professor MARCHIAFAVAdied serenely in Rome in his 88th year. Physicians of great wisdom, high integrity and warm humanity have the special reward of being beloved as well as admired. MARCHIAFAVA was the personal physician of three Popes and of the Royal House of Savoy, but he was particularly the physician of the poor people of Rome. He was active and untiring even in his extreme old age in every move to improve medical assistance and promote measures for the prevention of disease, so that at his simple funeral service the church was unable to hold the people of every class --Senators, members of the Government, doctors, scientists, labourers and sisters of charity--who came to pay tribute to a great citizen as well as a great scientist. He had been made Senator of Italy in 1913. To the throng of his old students he was both an investigative pathologist and a friendly, enthusiastic teacher, striving always to link the anatomical with the clinical picture of disease. He became full Professor in the University of Rome at 36, retiring in 1922 at the age of 75. He wrote and spoke with charm and clarity, and possessed a wide humanistic culture, being especially at home in Latin and Greek. To the world, of course, he was one of the foremost malariologists, a member of that famous Italian group wkich included GOLGI, CELLI, GRASSI, BIGNAMI and BASTIANELLI,and which at the turn of the last century, developed the fundamental discoveries of LAVERAN and Ross, building the structure of our present knowledge of the Plasmodium species and their transmission by a particular genus of mosquito. To MARCHIAFAVAbelongs the honour of describing after patient research the forms and life cycle of P. falciparum, noting first the pigment in 1879 before the parasite itself was discovered, identifying the ring forms in 1883 and finally (1889) correlating the whole developmental cycle of the parasite with the course of estivo-autumnal fever, just as GOLCI had done with P. vivax and P. malariae. In 1902, with BIGNAMI he published his great book La Infezione Malarica. This was a fundamental work which no malariologist to-day can afford to neglect. As a research worker and as a clinician MARCHIAFAVA was sternly methodical and exact, and hence this accurate record of his observations has not been rendered obsolete by the advance of knowledge, but to use ST. BEUVE'S definition of a classic, remains " easily contemporaneous with all time." The jealousies and bitter polemics which characterized, for some
,~0~
ETTORE MARCIIIAFAVA
curious reason, the early history of malaria discovery, left MARCHIAFAVA untouched. There was an unmistakable modesty, integrity and highmindedness about him that in the evening of his life provided him with a multitude of friends and no enemies.
He was elected to many Italian and foreign scientific groups in recognition of his scientific attainments, and was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from its foundation in 1907. He went to London in 1926 to receive the Manson Medal from this Society. He was active mentally and physically to the end, and a frequent visitor to the library of the Malaria Experiment Station in Rome, helpful and unassuming always as becomes a great man. L. W. }{ACKETT.
,~S~~'~ /fY
To face page 425.