
Filippo Pacini (25 May 1812 – 9 July 1883) was an Italian
anatomist
Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old scien ...
, posthumously famous for isolating the
cholera
Cholera () is an infection of the small intestine by some Strain (biology), strains of the Bacteria, bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea last ...
bacterium ''
Vibrio cholerae
''Vibrio cholerae'' is a species of Gram-negative bacteria, Gram-negative, Facultative anaerobic organism, facultative anaerobe and Vibrio, comma-shaped bacteria. The bacteria naturally live in Brackish water, brackish or saltwater where they att ...
'' in 1854, well before
Robert Koch
Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch ( ; ; 11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax, he i ...
's more widely accepted discoveries 30 years later.
Pacini was born in
Pistoia
Pistoia (; ) is a city and ''comune'' in the Italian region of Tuscany, the capital of a province of the same name, located about north-west of Florence and is crossed by the Ombrone Pistoiese, a tributary of the River Arno. It is a typic ...
, Tuscany, to Francesco, a humble cobbler, and Umiltà Dolfi, but was given a religious education in hopes that he would become a bishop. However, in 1830, he was given a scholarship to the most venerable medical school in Pistoia. He learned his job as a doctor and how to examine and dissect dead bodies under a microscope.
In 1831, during a dissection class, Pacini discovered small sensory organs in the
nervous system
In biology, the nervous system is the complex system, highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its behavior, actions and sense, sensory information by transmitting action potential, signals to and from different parts of its body. Th ...
which can detect pressure and vibrations. He studied them closely from 1833 on, and first discussed them in 1835 at the ''Società medico-fisica'' in Florence, but did not publish his research ("''Nuovi organi scoperti nel corpo umano''") until 1840. Within just a few years, the work was widely known in Europe and the bodies had become known as
Pacinian corpuscles
The Pacinian corpuscle (also lamellar corpuscle, or Vater–Pacini corpuscle) is a low-threshold mechanoreceptor responsive to vibration or pressure, found in the skin and other internal organs. In the skin it is one of the four main types of cuta ...
.
He served as an assistant to
Paolo Savi
Paolo Savi (11 July 1798 – 5 April 1871) was an Italian geologist and ornithologist.
Biography
Savi was born in Pisa, the son of Gaetano Savi, professor of botany at the University of Pisa. The younger Savi became assistant lecturer in zoo ...
in
Pisa
Pisa ( ; ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Tuscany, Central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for the Leaning Tow ...
from 1840 to 1843, then began working at the Institute of Human Anatomy. He was professor of anatomy at the
University of Pisa
The University of Pisa (, UniPi) is a public university, public research university in Pisa, Italy. Founded in 1343, it is one of the oldest universities in Europe. Together with Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and Sant'Anna School of Advanced S ...
from 1844 to 1846. In 1847, Pacini began teaching at the Lyceum in Florence, and then was named chair of General and Topographic Anatomy at the "Istituto di Studi Superiori" at the
University of Florence
The University of Florence ( Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Firenze'') (in acronym UNIFI) is an Italian public research university located in Florence, Italy. It comprises 12 schools and has around 50,000 students enrolled.
History
The f ...
in 1849, where he remained to the end of his career.
The
Asiatic cholera pandemic of 1846-63 was the time period when Pacini made his discovery of the cholera bacillus. Cholera came to Florence in 1854 during what is now known as the third cholera pandemic. Pacini became very interested in the disease. Immediately following the death of cholera patients, he performed an autopsy and with his microscope, conducted histological examinations of the intestinal mucosa. During such studies, Pacini discovered a comma-shaped bacillus which he described as a Vibrio. He published a paper in 1854 entitled, "Microscopical observations and pathological deductions on cholera" in which he described the organism and its relation to the disease. His microscopic slides of the organism were clearly labeled, identifying the date and nature of his investigations (see figure). But because of the prevailing belief of Italian scientists in the
miasma theory of disease
The miasma theory (also called the miasmic theory) is an Superseded scientific theories#Medicine, abandoned medical theory that held that diseases—such as cholera, Chlamydia infection, chlamydia, or Plague (disease), plague—were caused by a ...
, the work was not noted by others until many years after his death, despite additional publications in 1865, 1866, 1871, 1876, and 1880 which identified the cause of the disease's lethality, and even proposed some effective treatments.
John Snow
John Snow (15 March 1813 – 16 June 1858) was an English physician and a leader in the development of anaesthesia and medical hygiene. He is considered one of the founders of modern epidemiology and early germ theory, in part because of hi ...
, who disproved the miasma theory, and
Robert Koch
Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch ( ; ; 11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax, he i ...
, were widely and erroneously credited with the discovery of the bacillum 30 years later. Pacini's work was repeatedly published and readily available to the international scientific community via the English translation published in The British and Foreign Medico-chirurgical Review, Volume 38, July 1866. Also in 1854, the
Catalan Joaquim Balcells i Pascual discovered the cholera bacterium.
When Koch, a much more widely respected scientist who had previously identified the
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...
bacillus, presented his findings to the Cholera Commission of the Imperial Health Office in Berlin in 1884, the commission congratulated him, but also recognized Pacini's previous discovery of the bacterium. In 1965, the international committee on nomenclature adopted the formal name ''Vibrio cholerae'' Pacini 1854 to honor his work.
Who Named It: Filippo Pacini
/ref>
During his career, Pacini also published several studies on the retina
The retina (; or retinas) is the innermost, photosensitivity, light-sensitive layer of tissue (biology), tissue of the eye of most vertebrates and some Mollusca, molluscs. The optics of the eye create a focus (optics), focused two-dimensional ...
of the human eye, the electric organs in electric fishes, the structure of bone, and the mechanics of respiration.
Pacini spent most of the money remaining after his scientific investigations on the long-term care of his two ailing sisters, Assunta and Maria Giustina. He died nearly penniless in Florence on July 9, 1883, and was buried in the cemetery of the Misericordia. In 1935, his remains were transferred to the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Pistoia, along with the remains of Atto Tigri and Filippo Civinini, two other noted anatomists.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pacini, Filippo
Italian anatomists
Italian microbiologists
1812 births
1883 deaths
Scientists from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany
People from Pistoia
Academic staff of the University of Florence
Cholera