We all know that malaria is an infectious disease spread by mosquitos. Female Anopheles mosquitos spread the infection, a microorganism called a plasmodium, when taking a blood meal. But as the quotation often attributed to Mark Twain says “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so”.
Malaria remains a serious illness in many parts of the world, blamed for 600,000 deaths per year. In this book Ulick Stafford investigates evidence about the mosquito-plasmodium hypothesis for its transmission and other potential causes or contributory factors. He looks at the early history of the illness. He reports on the early research of Laveran, Ross and Grassi who developed the accepted transmission story. The potential collateral damage caused by current treatment and prevention programmes are discussed. The contributory effects of other factors, in particular malnutrition are introduced.
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In 1900, Giovanni Battista Grassi published one of the most important works on the current understanding of malaria, “Studi di uno Zoologo sulla Malaria” (Studies of a Zoologist study about malaria).
Francis Cox in History of the discovery of the malaria parasites and their vectors in 2010 said “…the Italian workers, now convinced that malaria was caused by a parasite, took up the challenge with vigour and Marchiafava and Bignami, using a combination of eosin-based blood stains and the oil-immersion microscope objective developed by the Carl Zeiss Company in 1882-4, observed amoeboid movement of the organism. This left them in no doubt that they were dealing with a protozoan parasite that invaded red blood cells, grew within the cells and produced daughter cells that invaded fresh blood cells. Thereafter the Italian views dominated malaria research and, based on observations of the erythrocytic stages of the parasite, Golgi between 1885-6 differentiated between tertian (48 hour periodicity) and quartan (72 hour periodicity) malaria and in 1889-1890 Golgi and Marchiafava further described the differences between mild Spring malaria (benign tertian) and severe Summer-Autumn (malignant tertian) malaria. The situation as it existed in 1900 is beautifully summarised by Grassi in his monograph, Studi di uno Zoologo Sulla Malaria and, although more details have since been added, this work remains as relevant today as it was 110 years ago”.
Despite this great praise about its relevance, this great work has not been generally available in English until now. It has now been translated and published in English for the first time.
Battista Grassi was an accomplished zoologist on many topics including helminths and protozoa and etymology before working on malaria. He also studied eels and other marine animals. At the age of 29, in 1883, he was appointed as professor of zoology at the University of Catania in Italy. In 1895, he was made the chair of comparative anatomy in the University Regia at Rome where he spent the remaining period of his active scientific life till his demise in 1925.
Note on translation by Ulick Stafford. I have reproduced Studi di uno Zoologo Sulla Malaria, second edition, as faithfully as possible as it was published in 1901 from a scanned pdf copy of the Smithsonian Library that is available on the internet. I have added occasional additional footnotes where necessary to explain difficult words and phrases. The translation is light touch retaining the structure and personal tone of Grassi’s own words.
Grassi’s book as published originally had seven foldout color illustrations at the back that are called Tables. This version has grey scale reproductions of these figures with some caption translations. The pictures of a dissected Anopheles mosquito, the modifications to a station house and the area of the railway study featured in Chapter 10 are reproduced on the cover.
STUDIES OF A ZOOLOGIST ABOUT MALARIA: Amazon.co.uk: Grassi, Prof G Battista,
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