Amico Bignami
| Amico Bignami | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
15 April 1862 Bologna, Italy |
| Died | 8 September 1929 (aged 67) Rome |
| Citizenship | Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Fields |
Medicine Malariology |
| Institutions |
Sapienza University of Rome Ospedale riuniti di Roma |
| Alma mater | Sapienza University of Rome |
| Known for |
Marchiafava-Bignami disease Transmission of malaria |
Amico Bignami (15 April 1862 – 8 September 1929) was an Italian physician, pathologist, malariologist and sceptic. He was professor of pathology at University of Rome (now Sapienza Università di Roma). His most important scientific contribution was in the discovery of transmission of human malarial parasite in the mosquito.
With researcher Ettore Marchiafava he described a neurological disease, which is now given the eponymous name Marchiafava–Bignami disease.
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 Ettore Marchiafava. 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.
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, 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, 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. Specifically they found that the crescent forms appeared in the second week of fever.
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