See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283483135 Bassi, Agostino Article · September 2013 DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0025074 CITATIONS READS 0 1,626 3 authors, including: Paolo Mazzarello Carla Garbarino University of Pavia University of Pavia 240 PUBLICATIONS 1,646 CITATIONS 20 PUBLICATIONS 41 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Multiple Sclerosis View project History of science View project All content following this page was uploaded by Paolo Mazzarello on 01 January 2019. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. SEE PROFILE Bassi, Agostino Introductory article Paolo Mazzarello, Museo per la Storia dell’Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italy Carla Garbarino, Museo per la Storia dell’Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italy Valentina Cani, Museo per la Storia dell’Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italy Agostino Bassi was the first to translate aetiological ideas on the microbiological genesis of diseases into an actual research programme. Dedicated to his own, private naturalistic researches, Bassi demonstrated experimentally that a type of silkworm disease was due to a ‘parasitic fungus.’ He successfully isolated the parasite and used it to infect a healthy animal. He was also responsible for intuitions on the concepts of immunity, healthy carriers, predisposal to contracting infections and the dynamics of epidemics. He understood that all infections are a product of parasitic beings that invade other living organic beings. This led to the microbiological theory of infectious diseases that would make enormous developments with the German, Robert Koch, and Frenchman, Louis Pasteur. Online posting date: 20th September 2013 and a tenacious opponent of the spontaneous generation theory; Antonio Scarpa (1752–1832), professor of anatomy and surgery, whose name is the eponym of many anatomical structures like the Scarpa triangle of the thigh and the Scarpa ganglion of the ear and Alessandro Volta (1745–1827), professor of physics and already internationally renowned for his investigation into electrical phenomena. See also: Spallanzani, Lazzaro However, shortly after Bassi enrolled at the university, important events took place in Lombardy. The Napoleonic army overcame Austria in Lombardy in 1796 and the University of Pavia entered into one of the most difficult periods of its centennial history. After the arrival of the French army, the Professor of Pathology Giovanni Rasori (1766–1837) was nominated rector of the University. He was politically a follower of the French revolutionary ideals and, as a medical doctor, an admirer of the theories Agostino Maria Bassi (Figure 1) was one of twins born to Onorato, a landowner, and Rosa Sommariva, an aristocrat. Born on 25 September 1773 in Mairago, near Lodi in Lombardy, he was baptised the day after in the church of San Marco Evangelista of Mairago. His early youth in contact with the countryside, agriculture and animals was instrumental in inspiring his precocious interest for natural science. He was educated at the local comprehensive school in Lodi and then, in spite of his intellectual inclinations, he was driven to study law at the University of Pavia by his father who had an administrative or legal career in mind for him. This institution, at the time the only university in Lombardy, had been founded in 1361 and was a major cultural centre under Austria. Among the famous professors who taught at the University of Pavia on the arrival of Bassi were Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729–1799), professor of natural history, one of the founders of experimental biology eLS subject area: Science & Society How to cite: Mazzarello, Paolo; Garbarino, Carla; and Cani, Valentina (September 2013) Bassi, Agostino. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester. DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0025074 Figure 1 Portrait of Agostino Bassi. Reproduced by permission of Dr. Agostino Lue. & Dr. Agostino Lue. eLS & 2013, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net 1 Bassi, Agostino of the Scottish physician John Brown. Rasori was also a supporter of the contagium vivum theory (i.e. the theory that epidemic diseases was generated by microscopic agents transmitted by a patient to a healthy individual), at that time not so considered. Between Bassi and Rasori a friendship began and a scientific collaboration destined to last until the end of Rasori’s life. As a student in the law faculty at the University of Pavia, Bassi was admitted to Ghislieri College, a prestigious institution founded in the sixteenth century by Pope Pious V, which during the French occupation changed its name into ‘Convitto Nazionale’ (National boarding school). Bassi, during the free time that his duties at the legal faculty allowed, began to follow the lessons and teachings of Spallanzani, Scarpa, Volta and Rasori, thus obtaining an informal but good preparation in physics, chemistry, natural sciences, mathematics and medicine which were the bases of his research activities later. He obtained a law degree from the University of Pavia on 21 May 1798 (his degree certificate was signed by the new rector Antonio Scarpa), and then he returned to Lodi where he began a public administrative career. There, he was named provincial administrator and police assessor under the new French influence. In 1802, he took part in the Extraordinary Cisalpine ‘Consulta’ (house) in Lyon, where the Italian Republic was constituted. Bassi was also nominated electoral member of the College of Scholars set up there. On returning to Lodi he was appointed ‘Central Chancellor’ and then he also reached an important position in the vice-Prefecture in Lodi, rejecting more important positions in Ravenna and Cento to stay closer to his family. Nevertheless, symptoms of an eyesight problem that would make him almost blind towards the end of his life began to appear and forced him to leave his job, or, as he wrote, ‘‘any literary occupation’’ (Bassi, 1812). To combat boredom and melancholy and to support his family, he took up agriculture and the breeding of more than 400 Merino sheep. Although disastrous financially, this enterprise was successful scientifically because Bassi made extraordinarily modern observations on breeding and cross-breeding in order to obtain races with different somatic features. In 1808, his improved eyesight allowed him to take up again administrative functions in the civic Hospitals in Lodi and, shortly after, in the Congregation of Charity of the town, a position that he retained for some years. In 1815, Bassi joined the recently founded Royal Imperial Provincial Delegation of Lodi. However, after 13 months, he was forced to resign as a result of a relapse of the ocular disease that struck him in the previous years. From the description he made years later of this illness, it was an inflammatory and painful disorder of the eyes. At this point of his life, he definitively returned to his agricultural and naturalist interests. Bassi was among the first to cultivate potatoes in Lombardy (introduced in this region by Alessandro Volta and by his aristocratic friend Teresa Ciceri Castiglioni), and he produced aromatic wines and highquality cheese. Many scientific publications of this period attest to his professional agronomical interest, including Il 2 Figure 2 A row of mulberry trees in the Italian countryside. Engraving taken from Quirici G (1887) Dell’allevamento del baco da seta e sue malattie, 5th edn. Pavia: Tipografia Fratelli Fusi. pastore bene istruito (1812), Dell’utilità e dell’uso del pomo di terra e del metodo migliore di coltivarlo (1817), Sulla fabbrica del formaggio all’uso lodigiano (1820). Meanwhile, he was also attracted by the study of different vegetable diseases like rice blast and mulberry-tree gangrene. However, Bassi devoted himself with particular attention to the cultivation of mulberry trees and the breeding of silkworms, one of the most popular agricultural industries in Italy at that time (see Figure 2). In 1807, he began to take an interest in a particular silkworm disease, known as calcino disease, sign disease (mal del segno) or muscardine which, from the early 1800s, had been ravaging silkworm farms in Italy and France, causing serious harm to the rural economies of these countries. Silkworms (Bombyx mori) are the larvae of the mulberry tree moth, which spin the silk cocoon (see Figure 3). Diseased silkworms do not appear to be ill until they are about to die: at this point they stop eating and slow down their movements. Once dead, their soft and floppy bodies would harden, become dry, brittle and glass-like, and coated in a powdery layer, ‘‘a bloom similar to pure snowflakes’’ (Bassi, 1835–36). At times, marks or ‘signs’ would appear in the diseased silkworms towards the end, which is why the disease was called sign disease. Owing to the white powder, similar to lime, that covered the silkworm’s body, it was also called calcino or calcinaccio (calce meaning ‘lime’). In France, it was termed muscardine, hence the alternative Italian version, moscardino. eLS & 2013, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net Bassi, Agostino Figure 3 Stages of the development of the silkworm, from Julien S and Bonafous M (1840) Dell’arte di coltivar i gelsi e di governare i bachi da seta secondo il metodo cinese. Sunto di libri cinesi tradotto in francese da Stanislao Julien. Versione italiana di Matteo Bonafous, 2nd edn. Torino: Giuseppe Pomba. Determined to reproduce the disease in experimental conditions in order to identify the condition to which it is naturally and favourably predisposed, in 1807–1808, Bassi began an extensive series of experiments and observations based on the idea (common among breeders) that the illness appeared spontaneously in the animal’s body as the result of certain breeding methods and environmental conditions (air, fumes, altered nutritional elements, etc.). He unsuccessfully treated silkworms with various poisons, minerals, corrosive substances and caustics. Finally, after many experiments, he succeeded in reproducing an illness that appeared similar to muscardine by suspending silkworms in small paper bags from a chimney, at different heights. The appearance of the dead animals was just like that of silkworms affected by calcino disease. Nevertheless, Bassi soon realised that the silkworms were not contagious: this was the substantial difference compared with the illness itself. In 1816, following years of research, the key to the mystery seemed as elusive as when he first started his experiments. Bassi then began to explore new alternative hypotheses to the spontaneous generation of the disease and his tenacity was, at the end, rewarded. After many attempts and detailed observations, before the year 1826, the naturalist reached the conclusion that the culprit for the illness was a ‘‘living, vegetative, organic killer [_] organism. It is a plant of the cryptogam family, a parasitic fungus’’ (Bassi, 1835–36). To reach this conclusion, despite his sight difficulties, Bassi made several microscopic observations. He established that disease transmission could occur by direct inoculation of the white dust, through food, contaminated atmosphere, hands and clothes of the farmers and also because of the presence of flies or by simple contact with the silkworm that died of the disease, on whose surface the pathogenic efflorescence (which is a mass of spores) was present. Therefore, calcino ‘never appeared spontaneously in the silkworm, nor in other insects’ but always originated in ‘an external organism, which enters the animal and generates the disease, and death, as it grows’ (Bassi, 1835–36). Thus, Bassi isolated the inductor pathogenic principle and he observed that the disease could be generated through the contact of healthy animals with the efflorescence. For the first time, a microscopic parasite was perfectly distinct from the disease that it produce (see Figure 4). Bassi studied the isolated ‘lime powder’ obtained from dead silkworm efflorescence and analysed its ability over time to infect healthy caterpillars through direct inoculation, and was able to establish that the infectivity of this material was at the most 3 years. The infection always had the same characteristics even after being present in worms of other species, not only using the dead body as an agent of infection of animals, but also the bug still alive. Bassi observed both the microbe vegetative cycle, characterised by the proliferation of filaments, which appeared ramous under the microscope unlike crystal filaments, and its sporogenous reproductive cycle, which caused the disease itself. Over different periods of time, he analysed the humidity and temperature that most favoured the microorganism’s development and assessed the infectious capacity of the spores to be 3 years. The dynamics of the transmission of sign disease generally mirrored that of contagions, so the experimental conclusions obtained on silkworm disease could be applied generally. Bassi formulated an important similarity: the disease of the silkworm passed from one silkworm nursery to another, and so from a farm to another gradually extending to the whole country, just as human contagious diseases spread gradually infecting increasingly vast territories. The dynamics of propagation of the calcino could therefore reflect, in general, that of infections, so the experimental findings obtained in this disease of silkworms could have a general validity. Bassi was aware that his discovery, born in the agronomic field, could be of interest to all natural scientists and medical doctors. eLS & 2013, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net 3 Bassi, Agostino Figure 4 Silkworm affected with the muscardine disease and the development cycle of Botrytis bassiana. Wax model by Angelo Maestri. Reproduced by permission of Sistema Museale d’Ateneo- Natural History Museum, University of Pavia. & University of Pavia. The first announcement of the transmissibility of calcino was given in the paper Nuovi cenni intorno all’arte di fabbricare i vini, all’educazione dei filugelli e dei mori ed altri oggetti agrari, published in Lodi in 1826. However, Bassi waited to fully describe his discovery. Only in 1834, he submitted his findings to the scrutiny of a Committee of nine professors from the University of Pavia, set up ad hoc, which included physicists, chemists, scientists and medical doctors. After the appropriate experiments, on 30 August 1834, the Committee confirmed and officially recognised the validity of the conclusions of Bassi. In 1835 in Lodi, Bassi published a first fundamental paper entitled Del mal del segno, calcinaccio o moscardino, malattia che affligge i bachi da seta, e sul modo di liberarne le bigattaje, anche le più infestate in which he set out the results of his long, meticulous observations on the disease (see Figure 5). This mostly theoretical paper was followed 1 year later by a more practical one in which he described how to prevent the spread of the disease. Despite the official declaration of the Committee of Professors from the University of Pavia, there were a number of disputes over the conclusions of Bassi. Some naturalists claimed that, during inoculation, possible hypothetical agents, able to generate the disease, could also be transmitted together the fungus. Bassi clearly realised that to fully respond to this question he should have repeatedly cultivated the microbe from the caterpillars in natural soils before placing it back in contact with the healthy silkworm in order to produce the disease again. However, his attempts to cultivate the fungus repeatedly failed. 4 The findings of Bassi were confirmed and extended by the naturalist Giuseppe Balsamo-Crivelli (1800–1874), who suggested calling the fungus responsible for the infection Botrytis paradoxa and then, in honour of Bassi, Botrytis bassiana (it is known today as Beauveria bassiana). Finally, in the middle of the century, Carlo Vittadini (1800–1865), a medical doctor and an assistant at the botanical garden of Pavia, was successful in his attempt to cultivate this agent in natural soils (honey, sugar solutions and humours of the silkworm) solidified in gelatin; these were among the first experiments of this kind ever realised in fairly controlled condition. The discovery of Bassi was a breakthrough in the history of natural science and medicine. For the first time, it had been possible to experimentally prove a chain of transmission of a contagious disease from animal to animal through the inoculation of microscopic contagious particles. It was the experimental beginning of the microbiological theory of contagious disease. Later in life, he made the clear statement, that ‘‘all infectious diseases, without exception are produced by parasites, namely organic living beings, which penetrate other living organisms [_] where they find food, and in these hatch, grow and reproduce’’ (Bassi, 1853). Bassi may also be considered a forerunner of antiseptic procedures. He studied the action of air, sunlight and various chemical substances on germs, which he had discovered and isolated and finely tuned different techniques for disinfecting environments and contaminated objects. He was also responsible for the extraordinary intuitions on eLS & 2013, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net Bassi, Agostino Figure 5 Agostino Bassi, Del mal del segno, calcinaccio o moscardino, malattia che affligge i bachi da seta, e sul modo di liberarne le bigattaje, anche le più infestate. Teoria. Lodi: Orcesi, 1835, frontispiece. the concept of immunity; seemingly healthy carriers or those recovered from infection; the predisposal to contracting infections and the dynamics of epidemics. Thanks to its discovery, Bassi was well respected by scholars and was enrolled in several scientific societies, including the Lombard Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts of Milan and the Vienna Medical Society. He was also honoured with the French Le´gion d’honneur. The translation of his work was published in French, and later in German, Hungarian and other languages, spreading to France, Switzerland, Spain and Russia. In France, in particular, the research of Bassi caught the attention of the Académie des Sciences and of scientists such as the botanist Jean-François Camille Montagne (1784–1866) and the entomologist Jean-Victor Auduin (1797–1841). They microscopically observed the development cycle of Botrytis both in vitro and on the insect. Years after Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) emphasised the primacy of Bassi in this discovery, saying: ‘‘We know [_] because of the precise research of Bassi [_], that this disease is caused by the development [_] of a vegetal parasite, indicated by the name of Botrytis bassiana, as a homage to whom, for the first time, described this fungus and made known its terrible effects’’ (Pasteur, 1870). See also: Pasteur, Louis In Zurich, Johann Lucas Schönlein (1793–1864), inspired directly by the results obtained by Bassi, began a series of experiments that led him to discover the aetiological agent of Tinea favosa (which was published in 1839), a dermatological infectious disease. This was quickly followed by the studies of David Gruby (1810–1898) on the aetiological agents of other contagious diseases of the skin. Bassi’s theory was also fully adopted, in the following year, by Friedrich Gustav Jacob Henle (1809–1885) in his important work on living infections. See also: Henle, Friedrich Gustav Jakob Despite the fame acquired and the honours granted to him, Bassi struggled to get rid of the economic difficulties that had troubled him for a long time. His financial conditions improved only from 1838, thanks to a legacy from his cousin Luigi Sommariva. The scientist was finally able to carry out his natural tendency for charity by helping the poor, especially the sick. The interest in medicine, alive since he was young, thanks to the relationship never interrupted with Rasori, led him to deal with various diseases of the time, such as malaria, pellagra and cholera. He published some papers on these topics like Sui contagi in generale e specialmente su quelli che affligono l’umana specie, Lodi, 1844; Discorsi sulla natura e cura della pellagra, sulla malattia contagiosa che attaccò l’anno scorso ed attacca tuttora in diversi stati d’Europa i pomi di terra, e come si possa arrestarla, e rimedj sicuri e pronti contro le febbri intermittenti, le scottature e le infiammazioni d’occhi _, Milano, 1846; Istruzioni intorno al modo di prevenire, curare ed allontanare per quanto e` possibile il fatal morbo colerico_, Lodi, 1849. He also practiced medicine in favour of friends and relatives. Many people, in Lodi, resorted to his opinion and to his care. In the treatment of acute and chronic diseases, Bassi had also experimented a new method, proposed by a German physician, C. F. Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843) – the homoeopathic medicine. The scientist died in 1856, almost blind, at the age of 80 years, mourned by adopted children, friends and fellow citizens. References Bassi A (1812) Il pastore bene istruito. Opera del Dott. Agostino Bassi di Lodi _.nella quale s’insegna il modo di ben governare le pecore, specialmente le spagnuole, e di ritrarne il più grande vantaggio. Aggiuntovi in fine il metodo da esso conosciuto in pratica il migliore di coltivare i pomi di terra per poter diminuire le spese ed accrescerne il prodotto, Milano: dalla stamperia di Gio. Giuseppe Destefanis, tipografo del Senato. Bassi A (1835–36) Del mal del segno calcinaccio o moscardino, malattia che affligge i bachi da seta e sul modo di liberarne le bigattaje anche le più infestate. Parte prima: Teoria. Parte seconda: Pratica. 2 vols. Lodi: dalla Tipografia Orcesi. Bassi A (1853) Della natura dei morbi ossia dei mali contagiosi e del modo di prevenirli e curarli. Lodi: C. Wilmant e Figli. eLS & 2013, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net 5 Bassi, Agostino Pasteur L (1870) Études sur la maladie des vers a soie. Paris: Gauthier-Villars. Further Reading Ainsworth CG (1956) Agostino Bassi, 1773–1856. Nature 177: 255–257. Arcieri GP (1959) Il posto di Agostino Bassi nella storia del pensiero medico. Torino: Minerva Medica. Bassi A (1826) Nuovi cenni intorno all’arte di fabbricare i vini, all’educazione dei filugelli e dei mori ed altri oggetti agrari. Lodi: Orcesi. Bassi A (1902) Storia della vita del Dr. Cavaliere Agostino Bassi, scritta da lui medesimo in Aprile 1842 per essere trasmessa a Parigi da un amico dello stesso Cavaliere che istantaneamente lo richiese a tal fine. Con aggiunte del Dr. S. Calandruccio. Paris: F.R. de Rudeval. Bassi A (1925) Opere. Pavia: Società Medico-Chirurgica di Pavia. Belloni L (ed.) (1956) Documenti Bassiani. Milano: Industrie grafiche italiane Stucchi. Belloni L, Vergnano L and Zambianchi A (1956) Studi su A. Bassi. Lodi: Archivio storico lodigiano. 6 Belloni L (1980) Per la storia della medicina, Sala Bolognese: Forni. Djalma Vitali E (1970) Bassi, Agostino. In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 7, pp. 121–122. Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. Major RH (1944) Agostino Bassi and parasitic theory of disease. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 16: 97–107. Mazzarello P and Rovati C (eds) (2009) Il contagio vivo. Agostino Bassi nella storia della bachicoltura. Milano: Cisalpino. Pensa A (1961) Pietro Moscati, Antonio Scarpa, Bartolomeo Panizza, Agostino Bassi, Giulio Bizzozero e Camillo Golgi. In: Discipline e maestri dell’Ateneo Pavese, pp. 235–282. Milano: Mondadori. Petenghi M (1856) Cenni intorno alla vita ed alle opere del dott. Agostino Bassi di Lodi. Lodi: Tipografia di C. Wilmant e figli. Porter JR (1973) Agostino Bassi bicentennial (1773–1973). Bacteriological Reviews 37: 284–288. Riquier GC (1924) Agostino Bassi e la sua opera. Pavia: Tipografia Cooperativa. Robinson G (1970) Agostino Bassi. In: Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 1, pp. 492–494. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. eLS & 2013, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net View publication stats