MARCHIAFAVA, ETTORE. - Scientist, pathologist, clinician and humanist, b. in Rome on 3 Jan. 1847, d. there on 25 Oct. 1935. In 1871 he began his hospital career at the Pio Istituto di S. Spirito, where in 1872, through public competition, he won the grand gold medal; appointed the same year assistant to the chair of pathological anatomy in Rome, he became full professor in 1883, holding it until 1922, a master to Italians and foreigners alike for the genius of his research and studies.
Among his numerous works and discoveries, mention should be made of those on tubercular arteritis and on syphilitic arteritis of the newborn; on productive epithelial glomerulonephritis; on the outcome of pneumonia in induration; on the degeneration of the corpus callosum and of the commissural pathways of the brain in chronic alcoholism, etc. His name remains especially famous for his studies on malaria and for the great treatise on the subject, which he compiled in collaboration with his pupil Bignami; the government of the U.S.A. wished to have it translated and printed at its own expense, as a state work.
For his scientific merits he was counted among the members of the most illustrious academies in the world; in 1933 the Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene of London solemnly conferred upon him the Patrick Manson Medal. He was a senator of the Kingdom, president of the Superior Council of Public Health and vice-president of the Accademia dei Lincei. He openly and faithfully professed his Catholic faith; he enjoyed the full favor and august friendship of the pontiffs Pius X and Benedict XV, who wished him as their personal medical consultant and to whom he was always bound by devoted and faithful affection. In every activity, not divorced from his scientific and practical work as a physician, his succoring goodness always appeared, so that his industrious and very long life was always illuminated by the most beneficent charity.
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Giuseppe de Nismo