[Golgi's documents about the history of malaria]

Abstract

Camillo Golgi played a key role in the studies of malaria infection. Among his outstanding contributions to the topic are the description of the intraerythrocytic cycle of the malaria parasite Plasmodium, responsible for the quartan and tertian fever, and the discovery of the temporal relationship between the recurrent attacks of fever and parasite's multiplication in human blood. Moreover, Golgi was also actively involved in the campaigns against malaria performed in the first ten years of this century by his pupil Adelchi Negri. Golgi's archive at the Museum for the History of the Pavia University keeps important materials on the role of this scientist in the history of malariology. Here we summarize and report some brief extracts of the documents (mainly letters from the nineteenth century biologists to Golgi) relevant to the history of human malaria.