Giovanni Battista Grassi (1854-1925): a forgotten Italian scholar and his fundamental studies on malaria

A century ago, on May 4, 1925, an Italian doctor, zoologist, botanist, and entomologist called Giovanni Battista Grassi (1854-1925) died in Rome. Grassi was known especially for his studies on malaria, and he was one of the scholars who created the “Italian school of malariology” which played a critical role in the study and prevention of malaria. At that time malaria was a main problem in the colonies for the military. In the tropics malaria is a common disease that causes high fever and other symptoms. When the French chemist Louis Pasteur published his germ theory in the 1860s, scientists began to consider that an organism, might be responsible for the malaria disease and the breakthrough came in 1880 with a French army surgeon called Alphonse Laveran (1845-1922). By the middle of the 19th century, it was therefore clear that many diseases are caused by microorganisms, and several scholars began to assume that also malaria was caused by a bacterium. Laveran recognized the parasite group that caused the infection in human beings, however his studies were challenged. He after examining blood from people infected with malaria, (1889) was able to absolutely show that malaria is caused by another type of single-celled organism, a protozoan of the Plasmodium family, which attacks red blood cells. Laveran also identified other single-celled parasites that cause other diseases. In fact, there are four types of malarial infection caused by four species of parasite plasmodium. In 1898 Grassi began a large study that represented a turning point in the study and treatment of the disease. With the current manuscript, in addition to recalling some of the main and well-known steps in the historical evolution of this fearsome, dangerous, and insidious infectious disease, we believe it’s important to remember the scientific personality of this Italian scholar. The scientist Grassi is to be noted among the protagonists in the view of history of medicine and zoology between the 19th and 20th centuries, mainly because of his famous research, developed by a group of scholars, which led to the exact identification of the vector of human malaria.