Paolo Mascagni – physician

Scientist was first to map the human lymphatic system

Paolo Mascagni studied geology before turning
to human science and anatomy

The physician Paolo Mascagni, whose scientific research enabled him to create the first map of the complete human lymphatic system, was born on this day in 1755 in Pomarance, a small town in Tuscany about 40km (25 miles) inland from the western coastline.

Mascagni described his findings in a book with detailed illustrations of every part of the lymphatic system he had identified, which was to prove invaluable to physicians wanting to learn more about a part of the human body vital to the regulation of good health.

He also commissioned the sculptor Clemente Susini to create a full-scale model in wax of the lymphatic system, which can still be seen at the Museum of Human Anatomy at the University of Bologna.

Later he created another significant tome, his Anatomia Universa, which comprises 44 enormous copperplate illustrations that set out to bring together in one book the full extent of human knowledge about the anatomy of the human body.  The ‘book’ in the event was so large it was never bound, each plate measuring more than 3ft 6ins (1.07m) by 2ft 6ins (0.76m), designed in such a way that those from the same plane of dissection can be placed together and show the whole body in life size.

Mascagni was the son of Aurelio Mascagni and Elisabetta Burroni, both belonging to ancient noble families from Chiusdino, a village in the province of Siena.

An illustration from Mascagni's celebrated
book on the human lymphatic system

He studied at the University of Siena, where his teacher of anatomy was Pietro Tabarrini, and graduated in philosophy and medicine in 1771. By his final year, he had been appointed assistant to Tabarrini and succeeded his mentor as Professor of Anatomy after blindness forced him to retire.

As a young man, Mascagni had been keen on geology and wrote a number of papers on the thermal springs of Siena and Volterra. Later, he would successfully identify boric acid in the waters and suggest ways to produce from it the industrial compound now known as borax.

After graduating, his focus turned to the human lymphatic system, feeling that he owed it to Tabarrini to do what he could to advance his teacher’s research into the workings of the human body. He decided that he would not work in clinical medicine but devote himself entirely to teaching and research.

His work was interrupted for a while by the political upheaval of the late 18^th century, when Tuscany was occupied by the French. He became involved in politics somewhat reluctantly, becoming Superintendent of the Arts, Sciences and Charitable Institutions of Siena, and this placed him in constant conflict with the French authorities over their seizing of personal and public property.

Unfortunately, his involvement with the French was misinterpreted when Austria regained control of the area. Accused of having Jacobin sympathies, he was arrested and imprisoned for seven months.

The statue of Mascagni in the courtyard of the
Uffizi in Florence, where he lived for some years

On his release, he was appointed a professor of anatomy at the University of Pisa and began lecturing at the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence before becoming a full professor at the University of Florence.

In his research into the lymphatic system, Mascagni perfected a technique whereby he injected mercury as a contrast medium into the peripheral lymphatic networks of a human cadaver and by following the mercury’s flow to other parts of the system was able to produce detailed diagrams and models.

This brought him fame all over Europe, yet he did not limit himself to merely describing the anatomy of the lymphatic system.  By his research into its physiology and pathology he was able to highlight its importance in fighting disease in the human body, the understanding of which helped in the evolution of new treatments.

Mascagni died in 1815 during a stay at his estate in Castelletto, near Chiusdino, the village near Siena where his family originated and where he spent most of his free time. He had contracted a pernicious fever, probably malaria.

His memory has been commemorated in several ways. The street where he was born in Pomerance is now called Via Paolo Mascagni; the hamlet where the family lived, 33km (20 miles) southwest of Siena, is now known as Castelletto Mascagni, and there is another Via Paolo Mascagni in nearby Chiusdino.

A statue of Paolo Mascagni can be found in a niche in the courtyard of the Uffizi in Florence, as one of the great men of Tuscany.  His house in Florence was in Via Fiesolana.  There is also a monument to him in the Accademia dei Fisiocritici in Siena, of which he was president.

One of the medieval gates into the town of Pomarance

Travel tip:

The town of Pomarance, where Mascagni was born, sits on a hill overlooking Val di Cecina, on the border between the provinces of Pisa, 80km (50 miles) to the north, and Siena, 69km (43 miles) to the east. The main square, Piazza de Larderel, is named after Francois Jacques de Lardarel, a 19^th century French engineer who worked in the area on the exploitation of geothermal energy from the steam emitted by lagoons in the area.

The ancient village of Chiusdino occupies a hilltop position

Travel tip:

The ancient village of Chiusdino dates back to the seventh or eighth century, when it was a Longobard settlement, sitting on the top of a hill, surrounded by walls. Much of the history of the town surrounds the legend of San Galgano, who was an arrogant, licentious son of a local feudal lord in the 12^th century who changed his ways after a supposed visit from Saint Michael the Archangel, who told him he must give up his excesses, prompting Galgano to say it would be easier to cut a rock with a sword. As if to prove it, he launched a sword thrust at a rock and was amazed when the blade plunged into the rock as easily as a knife into butter. He knelt to pray and vowed to become a hermit. The sword in the rock remains on display in a chapel, the Rotonda della Spada, that was built around it.

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Camillo Golgi – neuroscientist

Nobel prize winner whose name lives on in medical science

Camillo Golgi expanded knowledge of
the human nervous system

Camillo Golgi, who is recognised as the greatest neuroscientist and biologist of his time, died on this day in 1926 in Pavia.

He was well known for his research into the central nervous system and discovering a staining technique for studying tissue, sometime called Golgi’s method, or Golgi’s staining.

In 1906, Golgi and a Spanish biologist, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system.

Golgi was born in 1843 in Corteno, a village in the province of Brescia in Lombardy.

The village was later renamed Corteno Golgi in his honour.

In 1860 Golgi went to the University of Pavia to study medicine. After graduating in 1865 he worked in a hospital for the Italian army and as part of a team investigating a cholera epidemic in the area around Pavia.

He resumed his academic studies under the supervision of Cesare Lombroso, an expert in medical psychology, and wrote a thesis about mental disorders. As he became more and more interested in experimental medicine he started attending the Institute of General Pathology headed by Giulio Bizzozero, who was to influence Golgi’s research publications. They became close friends and Golgi later married his niece, Lina Aletti.

Financial pressure led Golgi to work at the Hospital for the Chronically Ill in Abbiategrasso near Milan and while he was there he set up a simple laboratory in a former hospital kitchen.

A statue within the campus of Pavia University
commemorates Golgi's life and work

It was in his improvised laboratory that he made his most notable discoveries. His major achievement was the development of staining technique for studying nerve tissue called the black reaction, using potassium bichromate and silver nitrate, which was more accurate than other methods and was later to become known as Golgi’s method.

In 1885 he joined the faculty of histology at the University of Pavia and then later became Professor of Histology. He also became Professor of Pathology at the San Matteo hospital.  His connection with the university is commemorated with a statue within the grounds, while a plaque marks the house in nearby Corso Strada Nuova where he lived.

He was rector of the University of Pavia for two separate periods and during the First World War he directed the military hospital, Collegio Borromeo, in Pavia.

Golgi retired in 1818 and continued his research in a private laboratory. He died on 21 January1926.

In 1900 he had been named as a Senator by King Umberto I. He received honorary doctorates from many universities and was commemorated on a stamp by the European community in 1994.

The Golgi apparatus, the Golgi tendon organ, the Golgi tendon reflex and certain nerve cells are all named after him.

The Golgi museum in Via Brescia, Corteno Golgi

Travel tip:

Corteno Golgi, a village of around 2,000 people is situated in the High Camonica Valley, about 100km (62 miles) north of Brescia in the Orobie Alps in Lombardy. It has a museum dedicated to Camillo Golgi in Via Brescia. For more information visit www.museogolgi.it.

The covered bridge over the Ticino river at Pavia

Travel tip:

Pavia, where Golgi lived for a large part of his life, is a city in Lombardy, about 46km (30 miles) south of Milan, known for its ancient university, which was founded in 1361, and its famous Certosa, a magnificent monastery complex north of the city that dates back to 1396. A pretty covered bridge over the River Ticino leads to Borgo Ticino, where the inhabitants claim to be the true people of Pavia and are of Sabaudian origin.

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Carlo Urbani – microbiologist

Infectious disease expert who identified SARS

 Carlo Urbani was a World Health Organisation
specialist in infectious diseases

The doctor and microbiologist Carlo Urbani, whose decisive action after discovering the deadly SARS virus saved millions of lives, was born on this day in 1956 in Castelplanio, near Ancona.

Dr Urbani himself died after contracting the condition, which had been given the name severe acute respiratory syndrome.

He identified it in an American businessman who had been taken ill in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, with suspected influenza.

Recognising quickly that what he was dealing with was not a straightforward case of ‘flu, Urbani, who was working in Vietnam as an infectious diseases specialist for the World Health Organisation, immediately alerted WHO headquarters in Geneva.

He convinced them that what he had discovered posed a grave threat to life and thus sparked the most effective response to a major epidemic in the history of medicine.

At a local level, be persuaded the Vietnamese health authorities to introduce a raft of preventative measures, including large-scale screening and prompt, secure isolation of suspected victims, that slowed the spread of the disease.

At its peak, people in the areas affected by the SARS virus
were encouraged to wear surgical masks in public places

It was as a result of Urbani’s actions that the epidemic was largely contained, almost all deaths from the disease occurring in territories surrounding the South China Sea, namely southeast China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore and the Philippines.

Some 775 people died in the epidemic, two thirds of them prior to Urbani’s intervention.

The only significant outbreak beyond this area was in Canada, where 44 people died following the import of the disease into the country by a tourist who had stayed at the same hotel in Hong Kong as Urbani’s patient, who probably contracted the disease from a Chinese doctor who was a guest at a wedding there. 

This doctor had been treating patients suffering from the disease in Guangdong Province, just across the border from Hong Kong, where the virus is thought to have originated.

Urbani, whose parents were a teacher at the Ancona Commercial Navy Institute and a primary school headmistress, gained a degree in medicine from the University of Ancona and a postgraduate degree in tropical parasitology from the University of Messina in Sicily.  He began voluntary work in Africa while he was still at university.

Urbani contracted the virus after treating a
sick businessman in Vietnam

After a period of academic research, he went to work at a hospital in Macerata, about 55km (34 miles) from his home town of Castelplanio in the Marche region.  In 1993 he began to accept temporary assignments from the WHO in places such as the Maldives, Mauritania and Guinea.

In 1997, on a recommendation from the WHO, he joined Médicins San Frontières to work in Cambodia and Vietnam. He was elected president of the Italian section of MSF in 1999 and travelled to Oslo in the same year to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the organisation.

A year later he was recruited by the WHO to be their infectious diseases specialist in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, based in Hanoi. He achieved success in reducing the health impact of parasitic flatworms.

Urbani was summoned to Hanoi’s French Hospital following the admission on February 23, 2003 of a 47-year old Chinese-American businessman called Johnny Chen, resident in Shanghai, who had begun to feel unwell with 'flu-like symptoms soon after arriving on a flight from Hong Kong.

He became suspicious that Mr Chen had something different from normal influenza when several hospital workers who had been in contact with him quickly developed similar symptoms, some rapidly becoming seriously ill.

Sadly, the story has a tragic postscript.  After treating a number of sick patients, Urbani left Hanoi on March 11, bound for a conference in Bangkok, Thailand, where he was to give a talk on the subject of childhood parasites.

During the flight he became feverish. He realised straightaway what had happened and when he arrived at the airport in Bangkok told a colleague sent to meet him that he should call an ambulance immediately and inform the operator that he had almost certainly contracted the SARS virus.  While they awaited the ambulance, Urbani insisted his to his colleague that he was to allow no one within eight feet of him.

Urbani was in intensive care for 18 days but died on March 29, having ultimately suffered a heart attack.  He was only 46 and left behind a wife and three children.

The Arena Sferisterio in Macerata

Travel tip:

The walled city of Macerata in Marche, where Carlo Urbani worked in the local hospital, is a charming historic city of cobbled streets perched on a hill between the Potenza and Chienti rivers.  At the heart of the city, in the pretty Piazza della Libertà, is the Loggia dei Mercanti with its two-tier arcades, dating from the Renaissance. Macerata’s university is among the oldest it Italy, established in 1290.  Each July and August the city hosts the Sferisterio Opera Festival, which is held in the 2,500 seat open-air Arena Sferisterio, a huge neoclassical arena built in the 1820s.

The Arch of Trajan still stands guard over Ancona's harbour

Travel tip:

The coastal city of Ancona, where Urbani attended university, is a bustling port with a population of almost 102,000. Although the area around the port has an industrial feel, there are some notable beaches nearby and a good deal of history in the older part of the city, bearing witness to its Greek and Roman past. The 18m-high Arch of Trajan, built in honour of the emperor who built the city’s harbour, is regarded as one of the finest Roman monuments in the Marche region. Urbani may have been inspired to follow his chosen direction in life by the presence in Ancona’s harbour of the Lazzaretto, the pentagonal building constructed on an artificial island in the 18th century as a quarantine station designed to protect Ancona from diseases carried by infected travellers.

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Agostino Bassi – biologist

Scientist who rescued the silk industry in Italy

Agostino Bassi had lessons from
Lazzaro Spallanzani

Bacteriologist Agostino Bassi, who was the first to expound the parasitic theory of infection, was born on this day in 1773 at Mairago near Lodi in Lombardy.

He developed his theory by studying silkworms, which helped him discover that many diseases are caused by micro organisms.  This was 10 years in advance of the work of Louis Pasteur.

In 1807 Bassi began an investigation into the silkworm disease mal de segno, also known as muscardine, which was causing serious economic losses in Italy and France.

After 25 years of research and carrying out various experiments, Bassi was able to demonstrate that the disease was contagious and was caused by a microscopic parasitic fungus.

He concluded that the organism, at the time named botrytis paradoxa, but now known as beauvaria bassiana in his honour, was transmitted among the worms by contact and by infected food.

These findings enabled Bassi to rescue the economically important silk industry in Italy by recommending using disinfectants, separating the rows of feeding caterpillars and keeping farms clean.

A plaque outside the house in Paolo Gorini in Lodi, where
Bassi lived and studied, commemorates his life

Bassi announced his discoveries in his work Del mal del segno, calcinaccio o moscarduino, published in 1835.

He also produced scientific works on laboratory cultures of potatoes, on cheese and wine making, as well as the human diseases of leprosy and cholera, after which he made the important generalisation that many diseases of plants, animals and man are caused by animal or vegetable parasites.

Bassi preceded both Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch in formulating a germ theory of disease. He prescribed methods for the prevention and elimination of muscardine, which earned him a lot of prestige.

His father, a wealthy farmer, had wanted Bassi him to look after the family property when he grew up, rather than become a biologist. But he was able to take science lessons from the biologist, Lazzaro Spallanzani, who was one of his relatives.

Louis Pasteur is reputed to have had the portraits of both Spallanzani and Bassi on the walls of his office.

After Bassi’s death in 1856 in Lodi, when the biologist was 82, he was buried in the Romanesque church of San Francesco in his home town.

In 1953 the Italian post office issued a stamp on the 180th anniversary of his birth in 1773, featuring a portrait of Bassi bordered by pictures of silkmoths.

Via Agostino Bassi is the main street in Mairago,
where the biologist was born

Travel tip:

The comune of Mairago, where Bassi was born, is in the province of Lodi about 40km (25 miles) south east of Milan and about 7km (4 miles) southeast of Lodi. Mairago is surrounded by fields of corn and barley and there is widespread beekeeping in the area.

Agostini Bassi's tomb in the church of San Francesco

Travel tip:

Agostino Bassi’s tomb is in the 13th century church of San Francesco in Piazza Ospedale in Lodi, set against a wall in the right transept. The church is distinctive because of its two ‘open sky’ double mullioned windows in the façade, an early example of a design that was often repeated in northern Italy during the 14th and 15th centuries.

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Ulisse Aldrovandi – naturalist

Professor became fascinated with plants while under house arrest

Ulisse Aldrovandi: a portrait housed at the Accademia
Carrara in Bergamo, attributed to Agostino Carracci

Ulisse Aldrovandi, who is considered to be the father of natural history studies, was born on this day in 1522 in Bologna.

He became renowned for his systematic and accurate observations of animals, plants and minerals and he established the first botanical garden in Bologna, now known as the Orto Botanico dell’Università di Bologna.

Aldrovandi’s gardens were in the grounds of Palazzo Pubblico in Bologna but in 1803 they were moved to their present location in Via Imerio, where they are run by the University of Bologna but are open to the public every day except Sunday.

The professor was also the first person to extensively document neurofibromatosis disease, which is a type of skin tumour.

Aldrovandi, who is sometimes referred to as Aldrovandus or Aldroandi, was born into a noble family. He studied humanities and law at the universities of Bologna and Padua and became a notary. He then became interested in studying philosophy and logic, which he combined with the study of medicine.

Aldrovandi commissioned artists to
illustrate his catalogues of wildlife

He was charged with heresy in 1549, accused of supporting theories doubting the Holy Trinity, and kept under house arrest in Rome until he was absolved in 1550.

During this time he developed an interest in botany, zoology and geology and, as soon as he was free to travel, he organised expeditions to the mountains, countryside, islands and coastal regions of Italy to collect and catalogue plants.

After obtaining a degree in medicine and philosophy in 1553, Aldrovandi started teaching logic and philosophy at the University of Bologna.

He rose to become Professor of Philosophy and then in 1561 became the first Professor of Natural Sciences at the university.

Aldrovandi assembled a collection of curiosities, about 7000 nature specimens, for which he wrote detailed descriptions. He collected plants for an herbarium and preserved more than 4,000 sheets of dried specimens in 16 volumes. He also commissioned artists to make illustrations of his specimens.

After a dispute about the composition of a popular medicine with pharmacists and doctors, Aldrovandi was suspended from all public positions for five years.

Aldrovandi painstakingly dried and
preserved the leaves of plant species

In 1577 he sought the aid of Pope Gregory XIII, who was a cousin of his mother. The Pope wrote to the authorities in Bologna asking for Aldrovandi to be reinstated and also gave him financial aid to help him publish his books.

Aldrovandi left his vast collection of works on botany and zoology to the Senate of Bologna and after his death at the age of 82 in 1605 they were conserved in Palazzo Pubblico and then in Palazzo Poggi.

They were distributed among other libraries in the 19th century but in 1907 some of the collection was brought back to Palazzo Poggi. In 2005 an exhibition to mark the 400th anniversary of Aldrovandi’s death was held there.

A ridge of the moon is named Dorsa Aldrovandi and the plant genus Aldrovanda is also named after him.

The Ulisse Aldrovandi Museum at the Palazzo Poggi

Travel tip:

Palazzo Poggi in Via Zamboni in Bologna is now the headquarters of the University of Bologna and contains the Ulisse Aldrovandi Museum. The palace was built between 1549 and 1560 for the Poggi family and became the Home of the Institute of Sciences in 1714. During the Napoleonic period the various collections became scattered between different museums but at the end of the last century the University set up a project to bring the dispersed collections back to their historic home.

The Aldrovandi Botanical Gardens in Bologna

Travel tip:

One of the main sights in the small town of San Giovanni in Persiceto near Bologna is the Civico Orto Botanico Ulisse Aldrovandi, a municipal botanical garden established in 1985 and named in honour of the naturalist.

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Lazzaro Spallanzani – priest and scientist

18th century biologist who pioneered artificial insemination 

Lazzaro Spallanzani

Lazzaro Spallanzani, the first scientist to interpret the process of digestion and the first to carry out a successful artificial insemination, died on this day in 1799 in Pavia.

Spallanzani made important contributions to the experimental study of bodily functions and animal reproduction. His investigations into the development of microscopic life in nutrient culture solutions paved the way for the later research of Louis Pasteur.

Born in Scandiano in the province of Reggio Emilia, the son of a wealthy lawyer, Spallanzani attended a Jesuit college and was ordained as a priest but then went to Bologna to study law.

Influenced by the eminent Laura Bassi, a professor of physics at the University, Spallanzani became interested in science.

Laura Bassi, whose work at the University
of Bologna influenced Spallanzani

In 1754 Spallanzani was appointed professor of logic, metaphysics and Greek at a college in Reggio and he later became a professor of physics at the University of Modena.

Spallanzani experimented in transplantation, successfully transplanting the head of one snail on to the body of another.

After a series of experiments on digestion, he obtained evidence that digestive juices contain special chemicals that are suited to particular foods.

He also performed in vitro fertilisation on frogs and, in 1780, artificial insemination on a dog, the first successful experiment of its kind on any animal recorded anywhere in the world.

As Spallanzani’s fame grew he received many offers from scientific societies throughout Europe but he accepted a chair at the University of Pavia in 1769, where he remained for the rest of his life.

He took every opportunity to travel in order to study new phenomena and to meet other scientists.

A coin struck in 1932 to commemorate
Spallanzani's achievements

In 1788 he visited Vesuvius in Campania and the volcanoes of the Lipari islands and Sicily and recorded the results of his research in a large work, Viaggi alle due Sicilie ed in alcune parti dell’Appennino.

Spallanzani died from bladder cancer on 12 February 1799 in Pavia. After his death his bladder was removed for study by his colleagues and it was then placed on public display in a museum in Pavia, where it remains to this day.

A number of medals and coins have been struck to commemorate Spallanzani's achievements, including one produced for the 14th International Congress of Physiology, in Rome, in 1932, designed by Renato Brozzi.

The monument to Lazzaro Spallanzani
in his home town of Scandiano

Travel tip:

There is a statue of Lazzaro Spallanzani showing him examining a frog through a magnifying glass, in his home town of Scandiano, which is near Reggio Emilia in Emilia-Romagna. The town was founded in 1262 when a defensive castle was built and some houses later developed around it. The town is now an important centre for the production of tiles.

Book a stay in Scandiano with Booking.com

Travel tip:

Pavia, where Lazzaro Spallanzani died, is a city in Lombardy, south of Milan. It is famous for its university, where Spallanzani taught, which was founded in 1361, and for its Certosa, a magnificent monastery complex north of the city that dates back to 1396. A pretty covered bridge over the River Ticino in the centre of Pavia leads to Borgo Ticino, an area where the inhabitants claim to be the true people of Pavia and are of Sabaudian origin, which means they are connected with the House of Savoy, from where the rulers of Italy came.

Find Pavia accommodation with Booking.com

More reading:

How ground-breaking academic Laura Bassi paved way for women

Scientist Luigi Galvani appeared to give new life to dead frog

Giuseppe Forlenza's cataract surgery impressed Napoleon

Also on this day:

1602: The birth of painter Michelangelo Cerquozzi

1923: Birth of film director Franco Zeffirelli 

1937: The birth of Vittorio Emanuele, heir to the last King of Italy

1944: The birth of actress and singer Claudia Mori

(Picture credits: Scandiano monument by Maxo via Wikimedia Commons)

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