Agostino Bassi

Agostino Maria Bassi

Agostino Maria Bassi (born September 25, 1773 in Mairago , † February 6, 1856 in Lodi , Italy ) was an Italian lawyer with a keen interest in biological issues. In 1835 he proved that the causative agent of a disease in silkworms was a fungus , thus providing the first example of an infectious disease caused by microorganisms .

Life

Bassi was a twin of Rosa Sommariva and the farmer Onorato Bassi. After his school days in Lodi, where he attended high school, he studied law at the University of Pavia at the request of his parents , but also attended physics, chemistry, mathematics and medical lectures. His teachers included the anatomist Antonio Scarpa , the physicist Alessandro Volta, and the pathologist Giovanni Rasori , and he attended lectures from Lazzaro Spallanzani , an opponent of spontaneous generation .

In 1798 he received his doctorate in law and was employed as a provincial official under the new French rule . As a result, he held various positions in the public service.

With poor eyesight, he returned to his father's farm in Mairago, where he spent the rest of his life. From 1807 he experimented on a disease of the silkworms called mal del segno , but was also interested in other agricultural issues. He imported and raised merino sheep , grew potatoes , and raised wine . He published the knowledge gained here in 1812 in the book Il pastore bene istruito , with which he primarily propagated potato cultivation.

plant

Before Bassi researched the mal del segno disease of the silkworms , it was generally believed to arise spontaneously ( spontaneous generation ). The disease was also known as calcino or calcinaccio in Italy because of the powdery white appearance of the caterpillars that died from it. Internationally it was referred to as muscardine under its French name . It caused great losses in the Italian and French silk industries . In his first experiments, Bassi also assumed a spontaneous emergence and looked for the necessary environmental conditions in nutrition, atmospheric influences or the breeding methods. After he was unable to produce the disease in this way, he suspected an excess of acid, but phosphoric acid was also unsuccessful. After a few years of experimentation, Bassi concluded that the disease was due to an external factor transmitted through food, contact with the white web around dead caterpillars, or the hands or clothing of silkworm breeders. The germs could also be transmitted by flies. Rooms in which caterpillars had been infected were contaminated. Bassi also succeeded in infecting healthy caterpillars with the white powder from dead caterpillars. He transmitted the disease to the caterpillars of other insect species and then again to silkworms. Under the microscope, Bassi identified a fungus, he thought the fine web after the death of the animals was its "seed". These “seeds” remained viable for two to three years and were the actual causative agent of the disease.

In 1833, Bassi presented his results at the University of Pavia and the following year repeated his experiments in front of a nine-member commission that agreed with his conclusions. In 1835 he published it in the book Del mal del segno . He referred to his teacher Giovanni Rasori, who had already postulated a contagium vivum , but only on the basis of the musty smell in contaminated rooms. Bassi, on the other hand, had shown for the first time through his experiments that fungi can cause disease in animals. In today's nomenclature, the mushroom is Beauveria bassiana , the white powder is its spores , the web is the hyphae . In the first part of Del mal del segno , Bassi suggested that a number of plant and animal diseases could be caused by the "germs" of parasites and that certain human diseases are also caused by such organisms. The second, practical part dealt with methods for the prevention and eradication of diseases of the silkworms. This included avoiding contamination, disinfecting the rooms in which the disease had developed and cooking the tools used. The organism that Bassi had discovered was examined by Giuseppe Balsamo-Crivelli (1800–1874) at the University of Milan and described as Botrytis paradoxa . Today it is called in honor of Bassi Beauveria bassiana .

Agostino Bassis tomb in the Church of San Francesco de Lodi

Basi's experiments were repeated and confirmed by Victor Audouin . Johann Lukas Schönlein wrote that he was inspired by Bassi when he discovered the first human pathogenic fungus. Because of the progressive loss of vision, Bassi could no longer work microscopically. Theoretically, however, he continued to deal with infectious diseases and claimed in his books from 1844 and 1849 that various diseases such as plague , smallpox , syphilis or cholera were part of it.

Fonts (selection)

• Il pastore bene istruito . Giuseppe Destefanis, Milan 1812.
• 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 . Part 1: Teoria . Part 2: Pratica . Lodi 1835 ( online ).
• Sui contagi in generale e specialmente su quelli che affliggono l'umana specie . Lodi 1844.
• Discorsi sulla natura e cura della pellagra . Milan 1846.
• Istruzioni per prevenire e curare il colera asiatico . Lodi 1849.

A selection from his works includes Opere di Agostino Bassi . Edited by GC Riquier, Pavia 1925.

literature

• Gloria Robinson: Bassi . In: Charles Coulston Gillispie (Ed.): Dictionary of Scientific Biography . Volume 1, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1981, pp. 492-494. (here also further literature)
• Werner Köhler : Bassi, Agostino. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 153.

Web links

Commons : Agostino Bassi  - Collection of images, videos and audio files