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pioneer of the line of inquiry that saw the origin of the erythroid and lymphoid lineages in a common ancestral element: a stem cell (Stammzelle). This was the “unicist” theory of the origin of blood cells, and the journal that Pappenheim had founded became an important means to spread his ideas.
The first two architects of Haematologica
An Italian physician, Adolfo Ferrata (1880-1946), joined Artur Pappenheim in 1909 to carry forward his specializa- tion studies in hematology. Ferrata was born in Brescia and studied medicine at the University of Parma. He had very early on shown a marked aptitude for investigating new fields of medical-biological sciences.6-8 By the time he graduated in 1904, he had already acquired a remarkable mastery of laboratory methods. This was further refined during a first period of study in Germany, in 1907, at the Institute of Pathology under the direction of Julius Morgenroth (1871-1924) who, with his teacher Paul Ehrlich, had introduced the concept of "complement" to indicate that fraction of the blood that favors the immune response. Shortly after his arrival, Adolfo Ferrata was able to demonstrate, through dialysis, the existence of two fractions of the complement (one soluble and the other part of the seroglobulins) that were inactive if taken indi- vidually but which reactivated if joined together. Ferrata spent 1908 in Italy but then returned to Germany, this time to the Pappenheim laboratory where he worked on the genesis of the morphological elements of the blood. The result of one year of hard work and intense study was a 130-page monograph, illustrated with four splendid color plates, published in collaboration with his German
Figure 2. Adolfo Ferrata.
mentor on Folia haematologica. Pappenheim and Ferrata provided persuasive morphological evidence to show that the elements of blood had a unitary origin. This fun- damental study began to impose a taxonomic order in a field of study that had become increasingly complex.
In 1912, back in Italy, Ferrata published Morfologia del sangue normale e patologico,9 a book that can be considered to represent the birth of Italian hematology. In Italy, Ferrata very soon became the leader in his field. At the same time, he started his university career, although this was interrupted during the First World War when he became the Director of a military hospital in Brescia. By the beginning of the 1920s, Ferrata was working in Naples at the II Medical Clinic of the University, and very quickly showed he was ready to take a university chair. After other temporary positions, he taught at the University of Pavia between 1924 and 1925, and, he became full professor there in 1926. It was a position he was to hold until his death.
By this time, it had been clearly recognized that what was needed was an Italian journal dedicated to hematol- ogy. To help in this, Ferrata found another young scientist who, like him, had spent some of his most important formative years training in Germany: Carlo Moreschi (1876-1921).10 Born in Cermenate, near Como, Moreschi had studied medicine at the University of Pavia as a member of the Borromeo College. During that time, he regularly attended the General Pathology Laboratory directed by Camillo Golgi (1843-1926). Moreschi quickly adopted the rigorous experimental approach promoted by Golgi and this is clearly evident in his first works, pub- lished in 1900, the year he graduated. Moreschi worked as an assistant to the Chair of Medical Pathology in Pavia, but in 1904 began a long scientific collaboration with the prestigious Institute of Hygiene of Königsberg, which continued until 1907. Partnerships with the bacteriologist Richard Pfeiffer (1858-1945), who had isolated Haemophilus influenzae in 1892, and the immunologist- hygienist Ernst Friedberger (1875-1932) were both extremely productive. After a brief period of work in Italy in 1907, he returned to Germany and worked in Frankfurt in the laboratory of Paul Ehrlich who, a year later, would receive the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Meanwhile, in 1907 and in 1908, Moreschi published the report of his impor- tant scientific discovery, the antiglobulin test. This was rediscovered by Robert (known as Robin) Coombs (1921- 2006), Arthur Mourant (1904-1994), and Robert Russell Rice (1907-1984) in 1945. It is now generally referred to as the Coombs test (or the Moreschi-Coombs test). In 1998, recalling this research, Coombs wrote that, when the substantial paper about the rediscovery was ready, “Arthur Mourant, a considerable linguist, came across a paper in the German literature from 1908 by a certain Carlo Moreschi which described enhancement of red cell agglutination with an ‘antiserum to serum’. An acknowl- edgement was added to the proofs as an addendum”.11-13 Back in Italy, Moreschi obtained a position as assistant professor at the University of Pavia, then, as we said before, he worked as a military doctor during the First World War. At the same time, his university career was also progressing. In 1916, he obtained a position as Associate Professor (“Professore Incaricato”) of Clinical
Centenary Review Article
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