Page 24 - 2020_01-Haematologica-web

Centenary Review Article
14
and Medical Pathology at the University of Sassari, Sardinia, and later the chair of the Medical Clinic in Messina, Sicily.
In 1921, while in Pavia, Moreschi showed the very seri- ous symptoms of hemorrhagic smallpox, probably con- tracted in Messina while he was visiting a patient, and died on May 24th.
The year before, Ferrata and Moreschi had met in the historic Neapolitan café, the “Gambrinus”, and during their discussion, Haematologica was founded. It was ini- tially printed in Naples by the publisher “N. Jovene & Co.” and then, from 1924, it was edited in Pavia.14 The two founders became editorial managers of the journal, and from 1922, after the death of Moreschi, Ferrata con- tinued in this role alone. It is evident how the model that inspired them was the journal founded by Pappenheim, Folia haematologica.
Haematologica: the beginning of a long story
Haematologica was founded in January 1920 under the best auspices. In fact, the first article had as its author the greatest living revolutionary of Italian medicine and biol- ogy, Camillo Golgi, Nobel prize winner in 1906 for his investigation of the structure of the central nervous sys- tem. During his life-time, Golgi made an enormous con- tribution to hematology and clinical pathology. In 1885- 1892, he had described with great precision the various stages of development of the malarial parasites in the blood (which became known as the Golgi cycle), identi- fying the correspondence between the moment of their reproduction with the periodic febrile bouts (Golgi law).15 So, the first series of articles in Haematologica were pub- lished under the most authoritative and prestigious name of Italian medicine, and the man who had taught
Figure 3. Carlo Moreschi.
Moreschi. It was a way to guarantee and certify the sci- entific credibility of the periodical, but also a sign of respect for the old pathologist. Golgi’s article was based on a new gold chloride staining method and described the appearance of a central body resembling a kind of nucle- us.16 He immediately distanced himself from those researchers who supported the thesis of a persistence of a real, functionally active nucleus in red blood cells. Among these was Angelo Petrone, who had been defending this concept since 1897 on the basis of experiments conducted using his own particular method. However, Petrone’s conclusion had been refuted by work carried out in Golgi’s laboratory by Adelchi Negri (1876-1912) in 1899.15 Petrone subsequently presented new observations that apparently seemed to confirm his old theory. The hypothesis of the existence of a nucleus in the red blood cells of mammals was, therefore, once again of some interest in Italian scientific circles. But Golgi pointed out that his investigations did not support this hypothesis, although he did not provide any alternative functional interpretation of his observation. These findings were subsequently interpreted as artifacts due to the technique used rather than to morphological peculiarities that actu- ally existed in the cell cytoplasm.17,18 In the same article, Golgi described the presence of the centrosome in white blood cells, while in a subsequent note he addressed the problem of the possible existence of the centrosome in erythrocytes.19
Immediately after the authoritative opening of the old master, whose studies were continued by his pupil Costanza Boccadoro (1893-1983),20,21 the first issue of Haematologica contained contributions by some of the exponents of Italian medicine and, in particular, hematol- ogy. The pathologist Pio Foà (1848-1923) investigated the
haematologica | 2020; 105(1)