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Bassi, Agostino
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DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0025074
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Bassi, Agostino
Introductory article
Paolo Mazzarello, Museo per la Storia dell’Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italy
Carla Garbarino, Museo per la Storia dell’Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italy
Valentina Cani, Museo per la Storia dell’Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italy
Agostino Bassi was the first to translate aetiological ideas
on the microbiological genesis of diseases into an actual
research programme. Dedicated to his own, private naturalistic researches, Bassi demonstrated experimentally
that a type of silkworm disease was due to a ‘parasitic
fungus.’ He successfully isolated the parasite and used it
to infect a healthy animal. He was also responsible for
intuitions on the concepts of immunity, healthy carriers,
predisposal to contracting infections and the dynamics of
epidemics.
He understood that all infections are a product of
parasitic beings that invade other living organic beings.
This led to the microbiological theory of infectious diseases that would make enormous developments with the
German, Robert Koch, and Frenchman, Louis Pasteur.
Online posting date: 20th September 2013
and a tenacious opponent of the spontaneous generation
theory; Antonio Scarpa (1752–1832), professor of anatomy and surgery, whose name is the eponym of many
anatomical structures like the Scarpa triangle of the thigh
and the Scarpa ganglion of the ear and Alessandro Volta
(1745–1827), professor of physics and already internationally renowned for his investigation into electrical
phenomena. See also: Spallanzani, Lazzaro
However, shortly after Bassi enrolled at the university,
important events took place in Lombardy. The Napoleonic
army overcame Austria in Lombardy in 1796 and the
University of Pavia entered into one of the most difficult
periods of its centennial history. After the arrival of the
French army, the Professor of Pathology Giovanni Rasori
(1766–1837) was nominated rector of the University. He
was politically a follower of the French revolutionary
ideals and, as a medical doctor, an admirer of the theories
Agostino Maria Bassi (Figure 1) was one of twins born to
Onorato, a landowner, and Rosa Sommariva, an aristocrat. Born on 25 September 1773 in Mairago, near Lodi in
Lombardy, he was baptised the day after in the church of
San Marco Evangelista of Mairago. His early youth in
contact with the countryside, agriculture and animals was
instrumental in inspiring his precocious interest for natural
science. He was educated at the local comprehensive school
in Lodi and then, in spite of his intellectual inclinations, he
was driven to study law at the University of Pavia by his
father who had an administrative or legal career in mind for
him.
This institution, at the time the only university in Lombardy, had been founded in 1361 and was a major cultural
centre under Austria. Among the famous professors who
taught at the University of Pavia on the arrival of Bassi
were Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729–1799), professor of natural history, one of the founders of experimental biology
eLS subject area: Science & Society
How to cite:
Mazzarello, Paolo; Garbarino, Carla; and Cani, Valentina (September
2013) Bassi, Agostino. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester.
DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0025074
Figure 1 Portrait of Agostino Bassi. Reproduced by permission of
Dr. Agostino Lue. & Dr. Agostino Lue.
eLS & 2013, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net
1
Bassi, Agostino
of the Scottish physician John Brown. Rasori was also a
supporter of the contagium vivum theory (i.e. the theory
that epidemic diseases was generated by microscopic
agents transmitted by a patient to a healthy individual), at
that time not so considered. Between Bassi and Rasori a
friendship began and a scientific collaboration destined to
last until the end of Rasori’s life. As a student in the law
faculty at the University of Pavia, Bassi was admitted to
Ghislieri College, a prestigious institution founded in the
sixteenth century by Pope Pious V, which during the
French occupation changed its name into ‘Convitto
Nazionale’ (National boarding school).
Bassi, during the free time that his duties at the legal
faculty allowed, began to follow the lessons and teachings
of Spallanzani, Scarpa, Volta and Rasori, thus obtaining
an informal but good preparation in physics, chemistry,
natural sciences, mathematics and medicine which were the
bases of his research activities later. He obtained a law
degree from the University of Pavia on 21 May 1798 (his
degree certificate was signed by the new rector Antonio
Scarpa), and then he returned to Lodi where he began a
public administrative career. There, he was named provincial administrator and police assessor under the new
French influence. In 1802, he took part in the Extraordinary Cisalpine ‘Consulta’ (house) in Lyon, where the
Italian Republic was constituted. Bassi was also nominated
electoral member of the College of Scholars set up there.
On returning to Lodi he was appointed ‘Central Chancellor’ and then he also reached an important position in the
vice-Prefecture in Lodi, rejecting more important positions
in Ravenna and Cento to stay closer to his family.
Nevertheless, symptoms of an eyesight problem that
would make him almost blind towards the end of his life
began to appear and forced him to leave his job, or, as he
wrote, ‘‘any literary occupation’’ (Bassi, 1812). To combat
boredom and melancholy and to support his family, he
took up agriculture and the breeding of more than 400
Merino sheep. Although disastrous financially, this enterprise was successful scientifically because Bassi made
extraordinarily modern observations on breeding and
cross-breeding in order to obtain races with different
somatic features. In 1808, his improved eyesight allowed
him to take up again administrative functions in the civic
Hospitals in Lodi and, shortly after, in the Congregation of
Charity of the town, a position that he retained for some
years. In 1815, Bassi joined the recently founded Royal
Imperial Provincial Delegation of Lodi. However, after 13
months, he was forced to resign as a result of a relapse of the
ocular disease that struck him in the previous years. From
the description he made years later of this illness, it was an
inflammatory and painful disorder of the eyes. At this point
of his life, he definitively returned to his agricultural and
naturalist interests. Bassi was among the first to cultivate
potatoes in Lombardy (introduced in this region by Alessandro Volta and by his aristocratic friend Teresa Ciceri
Castiglioni), and he produced aromatic wines and highquality cheese. Many scientific publications of this period
attest to his professional agronomical interest, including Il
2
Figure 2 A row of mulberry trees in the Italian countryside. Engraving
taken from Quirici G (1887) Dell’allevamento del baco da seta e sue malattie,
5th edn. Pavia: Tipografia Fratelli Fusi.
pastore bene istruito (1812), Dell’utilità e dell’uso del pomo
di terra e del metodo migliore di coltivarlo (1817), Sulla
fabbrica del formaggio all’uso lodigiano (1820). Meanwhile,
he was also attracted by the study of different vegetable
diseases like rice blast and mulberry-tree gangrene. However, Bassi devoted himself with particular attention to the
cultivation of mulberry trees and the breeding of silkworms, one of the most popular agricultural industries in
Italy at that time (see Figure 2). In 1807, he began to take an
interest in a particular silkworm disease, known as calcino
disease, sign disease (mal del segno) or muscardine which,
from the early 1800s, had been ravaging silkworm farms in
Italy and France, causing serious harm to the rural
economies of these countries.
Silkworms (Bombyx mori) are the larvae of the mulberry
tree moth, which spin the silk cocoon (see Figure 3). Diseased silkworms do not appear to be ill until they are about
to die: at this point they stop eating and slow down their
movements. Once dead, their soft and floppy bodies would
harden, become dry, brittle and glass-like, and coated in a
powdery layer, ‘‘a bloom similar to pure snowflakes’’
(Bassi, 1835–36). At times, marks or ‘signs’ would appear
in the diseased silkworms towards the end, which is why the
disease was called sign disease. Owing to the white powder,
similar to lime, that covered the silkworm’s body, it was
also called calcino or calcinaccio (calce meaning ‘lime’). In
France, it was termed muscardine, hence the alternative
Italian version, moscardino.
eLS & 2013, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net
Bassi, Agostino
Figure 3 Stages of the development of the silkworm, from Julien S and
Bonafous M (1840) Dell’arte di coltivar i gelsi e di governare i bachi da seta
secondo il metodo cinese. Sunto di libri cinesi tradotto in francese da
Stanislao Julien. Versione italiana di Matteo Bonafous, 2nd edn. Torino:
Giuseppe Pomba.
Determined to reproduce the disease in experimental
conditions in order to identify the condition to which it is
naturally and favourably predisposed, in 1807–1808, Bassi
began an extensive series of experiments and observations
based on the idea (common among breeders) that the illness appeared spontaneously in the animal’s body as the
result of certain breeding methods and environmental
conditions (air, fumes, altered nutritional elements, etc.).
He unsuccessfully treated silkworms with various poisons,
minerals, corrosive substances and caustics. Finally, after
many experiments, he succeeded in reproducing an illness
that appeared similar to muscardine by suspending silkworms in small paper bags from a chimney, at different
heights. The appearance of the dead animals was just like
that of silkworms affected by calcino disease. Nevertheless,
Bassi soon realised that the silkworms were not contagious:
this was the substantial difference compared with the illness
itself. In 1816, following years of research, the key to the
mystery seemed as elusive as when he first started his
experiments.
Bassi then began to explore new alternative hypotheses to the spontaneous generation of the disease and
his tenacity was, at the end, rewarded. After many attempts
and detailed observations, before the year 1826, the
naturalist reached the conclusion that the culprit for the
illness was a ‘‘living, vegetative, organic killer [_] organism. It is a plant of the cryptogam family, a parasitic
fungus’’ (Bassi, 1835–36). To reach this conclusion, despite
his sight difficulties, Bassi made several microscopic
observations. He established that disease transmission
could occur by direct inoculation of the white dust, through
food, contaminated atmosphere, hands and clothes of the
farmers and also because of the presence of flies or by
simple contact with the silkworm that died of the disease,
on whose surface the pathogenic efflorescence (which is a
mass of spores) was present. Therefore, calcino ‘never
appeared spontaneously in the silkworm, nor in other
insects’ but always originated in ‘an external organism,
which enters the animal and generates the disease, and
death, as it grows’ (Bassi, 1835–36). Thus, Bassi isolated
the inductor pathogenic principle and he observed that the
disease could be generated through the contact of healthy
animals with the efflorescence. For the first time, a microscopic parasite was perfectly distinct from the disease that
it produce (see Figure 4).
Bassi studied the isolated ‘lime powder’ obtained from
dead silkworm efflorescence and analysed its ability over
time to infect healthy caterpillars through direct inoculation, and was able to establish that the infectivity of this
material was at the most 3 years.
The infection always had the same characteristics even
after being present in worms of other species, not only
using the dead body as an agent of infection of animals, but
also the bug still alive. Bassi observed both the microbe
vegetative cycle, characterised by the proliferation of filaments, which appeared ramous under the microscope
unlike crystal filaments, and its sporogenous reproductive
cycle, which caused the disease itself. Over different periods
of time, he analysed the humidity and temperature that
most favoured the microorganism’s development and
assessed the infectious capacity of the spores to be 3 years.
The dynamics of the transmission of sign disease generally mirrored that of contagions, so the experimental
conclusions obtained on silkworm disease could be applied
generally. Bassi formulated an important similarity: the
disease of the silkworm passed from one silkworm nursery
to another, and so from a farm to another gradually
extending to the whole country, just as human contagious
diseases spread gradually infecting increasingly vast territories. The dynamics of propagation of the calcino could
therefore reflect, in general, that of infections, so the
experimental findings obtained in this disease of silkworms
could have a general validity. Bassi was aware that his
discovery, born in the agronomic field, could be of interest
to all natural scientists and medical doctors.
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3
Bassi, Agostino
Figure 4 Silkworm affected with the muscardine disease and the development cycle of Botrytis bassiana. Wax model by Angelo Maestri. Reproduced by
permission of Sistema Museale d’Ateneo- Natural History Museum, University of Pavia. & University of Pavia.
The first announcement of the transmissibility of calcino
was given in the paper Nuovi cenni intorno all’arte di fabbricare i vini, all’educazione dei filugelli e dei mori ed altri
oggetti agrari, published in Lodi in 1826. However, Bassi
waited to fully describe his discovery. Only in 1834, he
submitted his findings to the scrutiny of a Committee of
nine professors from the University of Pavia, set up ad hoc,
which included physicists, chemists, scientists and medical
doctors. After the appropriate experiments, on 30 August
1834, the Committee confirmed and officially recognised
the validity of the conclusions of Bassi. In 1835 in Lodi,
Bassi published a first fundamental paper entitled Del mal
del segno, calcinaccio o moscardino, malattia che affligge i
bachi da seta, e sul modo di liberarne le bigattaje, anche le più
infestate in which he set out the results of his long, meticulous observations on the disease (see Figure 5). This
mostly theoretical paper was followed 1 year later by a
more practical one in which he described how to prevent
the spread of the disease. Despite the official declaration of
the Committee of Professors from the University of Pavia,
there were a number of disputes over the conclusions of
Bassi. Some naturalists claimed that, during inoculation,
possible hypothetical agents, able to generate the disease,
could also be transmitted together the fungus. Bassi clearly
realised that to fully respond to this question he should
have repeatedly cultivated the microbe from the caterpillars in natural soils before placing it back in contact
with the healthy silkworm in order to produce the disease
again. However, his attempts to cultivate the fungus
repeatedly failed.
4
The findings of Bassi were confirmed and extended by
the naturalist Giuseppe Balsamo-Crivelli (1800–1874),
who suggested calling the fungus responsible for the
infection Botrytis paradoxa and then, in honour of Bassi,
Botrytis bassiana (it is known today as Beauveria bassiana).
Finally, in the middle of the century, Carlo Vittadini
(1800–1865), a medical doctor and an assistant at the
botanical garden of Pavia, was successful in his attempt to
cultivate this agent in natural soils (honey, sugar solutions
and humours of the silkworm) solidified in gelatin; these
were among the first experiments of this kind ever realised
in fairly controlled condition.
The discovery of Bassi was a breakthrough in the history
of natural science and medicine. For the first time, it had
been possible to experimentally prove a chain of transmission of a contagious disease from animal to animal
through the inoculation of microscopic contagious particles. It was the experimental beginning of the microbiological theory of contagious disease. Later in life, he
made the clear statement, that ‘‘all infectious diseases,
without exception are produced by parasites, namely
organic living beings, which penetrate other living organisms [_] where they find food, and in these hatch, grow and
reproduce’’ (Bassi, 1853).
Bassi may also be considered a forerunner of antiseptic
procedures. He studied the action of air, sunlight and
various chemical substances on germs, which he had discovered and isolated and finely tuned different techniques
for disinfecting environments and contaminated objects.
He was also responsible for the extraordinary intuitions on
eLS & 2013, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net
Bassi, Agostino
Figure 5 Agostino Bassi, Del mal del segno, calcinaccio o moscardino,
malattia che affligge i bachi da seta, e sul modo di liberarne le bigattaje, anche
le più infestate. Teoria. Lodi: Orcesi, 1835, frontispiece.
the concept of immunity; seemingly healthy carriers or
those recovered from infection; the predisposal to contracting infections and the dynamics of epidemics.
Thanks to its discovery, Bassi was well respected by
scholars and was enrolled in several scientific societies,
including the Lombard Institute of Sciences, Letters and
Arts of Milan and the Vienna Medical Society. He was also
honoured with the French Le´gion d’honneur.
The translation of his work was published in French, and
later in German, Hungarian and other languages, spreading to France, Switzerland, Spain and Russia. In France, in
particular, the research of Bassi caught the attention of the
Académie des Sciences and of scientists such as the botanist
Jean-François Camille Montagne (1784–1866) and the
entomologist Jean-Victor Auduin (1797–1841). They
microscopically observed the development cycle of Botrytis both in vitro and on the insect.
Years after Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) emphasised the
primacy of Bassi in this discovery, saying: ‘‘We know [_]
because of the precise research of Bassi [_], that this disease is caused by the development [_] of a vegetal parasite,
indicated by the name of Botrytis bassiana, as a homage
to whom, for the first time, described this fungus and
made known its terrible effects’’ (Pasteur, 1870). See also:
Pasteur, Louis
In Zurich, Johann Lucas Schönlein (1793–1864),
inspired directly by the results obtained by Bassi, began a
series of experiments that led him to discover the aetiological agent of Tinea favosa (which was published in 1839), a
dermatological infectious disease. This was quickly followed by the studies of David Gruby (1810–1898) on the
aetiological agents of other contagious diseases of the skin.
Bassi’s theory was also fully adopted, in the following year,
by Friedrich Gustav Jacob Henle (1809–1885) in his
important work on living infections. See also: Henle,
Friedrich Gustav Jakob
Despite the fame acquired and the honours granted to
him, Bassi struggled to get rid of the economic difficulties
that had troubled him for a long time. His financial conditions improved only from 1838, thanks to a legacy from
his cousin Luigi Sommariva. The scientist was finally able
to carry out his natural tendency for charity by helping the
poor, especially the sick. The interest in medicine, alive
since he was young, thanks to the relationship never
interrupted with Rasori, led him to deal with various diseases of the time, such as malaria, pellagra and cholera. He
published some papers on these topics like Sui contagi in
generale e specialmente su quelli che affligono l’umana specie, Lodi, 1844; Discorsi sulla natura e cura della pellagra,
sulla malattia contagiosa che attaccò l’anno scorso ed
attacca tuttora in diversi stati d’Europa i pomi di terra, e
come si possa arrestarla, e rimedj sicuri e pronti contro le
febbri intermittenti, le scottature e le infiammazioni d’occhi
_, Milano, 1846; Istruzioni intorno al modo di prevenire,
curare ed allontanare per quanto e` possibile il fatal morbo
colerico_, Lodi, 1849. He also practiced medicine in
favour of friends and relatives. Many people, in Lodi,
resorted to his opinion and to his care. In the treatment of
acute and chronic diseases, Bassi had also experimented a
new method, proposed by a German physician, C. F.
Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843) – the homoeopathic
medicine. The scientist died in 1856, almost blind, at the age
of 80 years, mourned by adopted children, friends and
fellow citizens.
References
Bassi A (1812) Il pastore bene istruito. Opera del Dott. Agostino
Bassi di Lodi _.nella quale s’insegna il modo di ben governare le
pecore, specialmente le spagnuole, e di ritrarne il più grande
vantaggio. Aggiuntovi in fine il metodo da esso conosciuto in
pratica il migliore di coltivare i pomi di terra per poter diminuire le
spese ed accrescerne il prodotto, Milano: dalla stamperia di Gio.
Giuseppe Destefanis, tipografo del Senato.
Bassi A (1835–36) Del mal del segno calcinaccio o moscardino,
malattia che affligge i bachi da seta e sul modo di liberarne le
bigattaje anche le più infestate. Parte prima: Teoria. Parte seconda: Pratica. 2 vols. Lodi: dalla Tipografia Orcesi.
Bassi A (1853) Della natura dei morbi ossia dei mali contagiosi e del
modo di prevenirli e curarli. Lodi: C. Wilmant e Figli.
eLS & 2013, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net
5
Bassi, Agostino
Pasteur L (1870) Études sur la maladie des vers a soie. Paris:
Gauthier-Villars.
Further Reading
Ainsworth CG (1956) Agostino Bassi, 1773–1856. Nature 177:
255–257.
Arcieri GP (1959) Il posto di Agostino Bassi nella storia del pensiero
medico. Torino: Minerva Medica.
Bassi A (1826) Nuovi cenni intorno all’arte di fabbricare i vini,
all’educazione dei filugelli e dei mori ed altri oggetti agrari. Lodi:
Orcesi.
Bassi A (1902) Storia della vita del Dr. Cavaliere Agostino Bassi,
scritta da lui medesimo in Aprile 1842 per essere trasmessa a
Parigi da un amico dello stesso Cavaliere che istantaneamente lo
richiese a tal fine. Con aggiunte del Dr. S. Calandruccio. Paris:
F.R. de Rudeval.
Bassi A (1925) Opere. Pavia: Società Medico-Chirurgica di Pavia.
Belloni L (ed.) (1956) Documenti Bassiani. Milano: Industrie
grafiche italiane Stucchi.
Belloni L, Vergnano L and Zambianchi A (1956) Studi su A.
Bassi. Lodi: Archivio storico lodigiano.
6
Belloni L (1980) Per la storia della medicina, Sala Bolognese:
Forni.
Djalma Vitali E (1970) Bassi, Agostino. In: Dizionario Biografico
degli Italiani, vol. 7, pp. 121–122. Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.
Major RH (1944) Agostino Bassi and parasitic theory of disease.
Bulletin of the History of Medicine 16: 97–107.
Mazzarello P and Rovati C (eds) (2009) Il contagio vivo. Agostino
Bassi nella storia della bachicoltura. Milano: Cisalpino.
Pensa A (1961) Pietro Moscati, Antonio Scarpa, Bartolomeo
Panizza, Agostino Bassi, Giulio Bizzozero e Camillo Golgi. In:
Discipline e maestri dell’Ateneo Pavese, pp. 235–282. Milano:
Mondadori.
Petenghi M (1856) Cenni intorno alla vita ed alle opere del dott.
Agostino Bassi di Lodi. Lodi: Tipografia di C. Wilmant e figli.
Porter JR (1973) Agostino Bassi bicentennial (1773–1973). Bacteriological Reviews 37: 284–288.
Riquier GC (1924) Agostino Bassi e la sua opera. Pavia: Tipografia
Cooperativa.
Robinson G (1970) Agostino Bassi. In: Dictionary of Scientific
Biography, vol. 1, pp. 492–494. New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons.
eLS & 2013, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net
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