Aldo Castellani
Aldo Castellani ( born September 8, 1877 in Florence, † October 3, 1971 in Lisbon ) was an Italian pathologist and bacteriologist.
Life
Castellani was born in Florence and went to school there. He graduated as a doctor in 1899 and went on for some time after Bonn, then in 1901 at the School of Tropical Medicine in London. As a bacteriologist at the Commission for sleeping sickness of the Royal Society in 1902, he traveled with George Carmichael Low and Cuthbert Christie to Entebbe, Uganda. Castellani demonstrated the causes and means of transmission of sleeping sickness, discovered the spirochete of yaws and provided further pioneering work in the field of bacteriology and parasitic skin diseases. In 1903 he was appointed bacteriologist with the Government of Ceylon in the central laboratory in Colombo. There he continued his research continues in the field of mycology and bacteriology; he described some new species of intestinal bacteria. He invented the absorption test for the serological determination of closely related organisms.
1915 Castellani left Ceylon and became professor of medicine in Naples. During the First World War in Serbia and Macedonia was a member of the Inter-Allied Health Committee. 1919 Castellani advisor to the UK pension Ministry. He was a lecturer in mushroom research and fungal diseases at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and operating a practice. In 1928 he was knighted as an honorary Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George. In 1932 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina. Castellani's enthusiasm for royal and other important patient, such as Benito Mussolini, tarnished his reputation, and during the Second World War he supported Italy against the Allies, while he was chief of the medical service of the Italian Army.
From 1960 to 1964 he was president of the International Society of Dermatology, which he had founded in 1959. He was also a professor of tropical medicine at the University of Louisiana and also at the Royal University of Rome. He followed the Queen of Italy Maria Jose portuguese exile and became a professor at the Lisbon Institute of Tropical Medicine. He died in 1971.
Named after him is the Castellani solution, an antiseptic, clearly dyed red by the contained fuchsin mixture, which was until about 2005 used in Germany for external use from infectious skin diseases such as ear infections. Because of the presumably toxic ingredients, the solution may not be used in Germany.
Writings (selection )
- Manual of tropical medicine, 1910 (with AJ Chalmers )
- Fungi and fungous diseases, 1928
- Climate and acclimatization, 21938
- Manuale di clinica Tropicale, (with Jacono )