Ettore Marchiafava was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 physician

Physician

A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

 and zoologist who worked on malaria

Malaria

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...

Ettore Marchiafava , was the personal doctor of three pope

Pope

The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...

s and the Royal House of Savoy

House of Savoy

The House of Savoy was formed in the early 11th century in the historical Savoy region. Through gradual expansion, it grew from ruling a small county in that region to eventually rule the Kingdom of Italy from 1861 until the end of World War II, king of Croatia and King of Armenia...

, a senator

Italian Senate

The Senate of the Republic is the upper house of the Italian Parliament. It was established in its current form on 8 May 1948, but previously existed during the Kingdom of Italy as Senato del Regno , itself a continuation of the Senato Subalpino of Sardinia-Piedmont established on 8 May 1848...

 and professor of Pathological Anatomy at the Sapienza University of Rome. He studied malaria intensively for 11 years, from 1880 to 1891.With Angelo Celli

Angelo Celli

Angelo Celli was an Italian physician and zoologist who studied malaria.Celli graduated in medicine in 1878 at the Sapienza University of Rome, where he became hygiene professor. In 1880 with Ettore Marchiafava he studied a new protozoan discovered by Alphonse Laveran and which they called...

 , in 1880 , he studied a new protozoa

Protozoa

Protozoa are a diverse group of single-cells eukaryotic organisms, many of which are motile. Throughout history, protozoa have been defined as single-cell protists with animal-like behavior, e.g., movement...

n discovered by Alphonse Laveran, finding it in the blood of the many patients affections from malaria fever, recognizing of several the stages of development.They called the new microorganism Plasmodium

Plasmodium

Plasmodium is a genus of parasitic protists. Infection by these organisms is known as malaria. The genus Plasmodium was described in 1885 by Ettore Marchiafava and Angelo Celli. Currently over 200 species of this genus are recognized and new species continue to be described.Of the over 200 known...

. He wrote Sulle febbri malariche estivo-autunnali (1892), and La infezione malarica (1902). In 1884, with Angel Celli, he first observed Gram-negative

Gram-negative

Gram-negative bacteria are bacteria that do not retain crystal violet dye in the Gram staining protocol. In a Gram stain test, a counterstain is added after the crystal violet, coloring all Gram-negative bacteria with a red or pink color...

 diplococci in the cerebrospinal fluid of a fatal case of meningitis in 1884. This was the then unnamed Neisseria meningitidis

Neisseria meningitidis

Neisseria meningitidis, often referred to as meningococcus, is a bacterium that can cause meningitis and other forms of meningococcal disease such as meningococcemia, a life threatening sepsis. N. meningitidis is a major cause of morbidity and mortality during childhood in industrialized countries...

(Meningococcus) the agent of bacterial meningitis, although this was not proven until 1887 when Anton Weichselbaum

Anton Weichselbaum

Anton Weichselbaum was an Austrian pathologist and bacteriologist who was a native of Schiltern....

 isolated the bacterium from six cases of meningitis and established the isolates as a distinct species. Marchiafava described for the first time the histopathology of syphilitic cerebral arteritis. In 1897 he observed a callused body in the brain of an alcoholic patient, and in 1903, with Amico Bignami

Amico Bignami

Amico Bignami was an Italian physician and entomologistHe was born in Bologna and graduated as a doctor in Rome in 1882. In 1883, he became extraordinary professor of pathology and in 1906, full-time professor at the University of Rome. In 1917, he became professor of medicine, a post he occupied...

, published a complete description of the insanity of alcoholics,one form of which is today known as Marchiafava-Bignami disease

Marchiafava-Bignami disease

Marchiafava-Bignami disease is a progressive neurological disease characterized by corpus callosum demyelination and necrosis and subsequent atrophy.-Eponym:...

. He was the first one to prove the importance of sclerosis of the coronary arteries in the pathogenesis of myocardial infarction

Myocardial infarction

Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...

He also worked on Nephropathy

Nephropathy

Nephropathy refers to damage to or disease of the kidney. An older term for this is nephrosis.-Causes:Causes of nephropathy include administration of analgesics, xanthine oxidase deficiency, and long-term exposure to lead or its salts...

 and described streptococcal

Streptococcus

Streptococcus is a genus of spherical Gram-positive bacteria belonging to the phylum Firmicutes and the lactic acid bacteria group. Cellular division occurs along a single axis in these bacteria, and thus they grow in chains or pairs, hence the name — from Greek στρεπτος streptos, meaning...

 glomerulonephritis

Glomerulonephritis

Glomerulonephritis, also known as glomerular nephritis, abbreviated GN, is a renal disease characterized by inflammation of the glomeruli, or small blood vessels in the kidneys...

.In 1931, it described Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria

Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria

Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria , sometimes referred to as Marchiafava-Micheli syndrome, is a rare, acquired, potentially life-threatening disease of the blood characterised by complement-induced intravascular hemolytic anemia , red urine and thrombosis...

 in depth,and also a rare form of this disease Strübing-Marchiafava-Micheli Syndrome.

He was the hygiene

Public health

Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals" . It is concerned with threats to health based on population health...

member of the city council of Rome and, in 1925, he organized the first international conference on malaria.