Luciano Polonelli Department of Biomedical, Biotechnological and Translational Sciences, Unit of Microbiology and Virology, University of Parma, Parma, Italy Tel.: +39 0521 903429; Fax: +39 0521 993620; e-mail:
[email protected] History of Medical Mycology File 2 (1895-1950) 1895 Giuseppe Marconi (1862-1940), born in Naples, Italy, Professor of Veterinary Pathology and Clinic in the Royal University of Pisa, Italy, isolated and cultivated for the first time Cryptococcus farciminosum, the agent of epizootic lymphangitis, in the form of sterile mycelium (1895). Piero Redaelli and Raffaele Ciferri transferred (1934) C. farciminosum to the genus Histoplasma, as H. farciminosum (Rivolta and Micellone 1883, Redaelli and Ciferri 1934), mainly because of its dimorphic nature that made it similar to the tissue form of H. capsulatum var. capsulatum Darling 1906. Robert J. Weeks, Arvind A. Padhye and Libero Ajello, at the Division of Mycotic Diseases, Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control (C.D.C.) Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. (1985), observed that this fungus generated macro- and microconidia resembling those of the capsulatum and duboisii varieties of H. capsulatum when incubated at room temperature, thus reducing the fungus to a varietal status as H. capsulatum var. farciminosum (Rivolta, 1873) Weeks, Padhye & Ajello, 1985. Raffaele Ciferri (1960) reduced Histoplasma duboisii (Vanbreuseghem, 1992) to varietal status as H. capsulatum var. duboisii (Vanbreuseghem, 1992), Ciferri, 1960 [Ajello, 1998; Marcone, 1895; Redaelli and Ciferri, 1934; Weeks et al., 1985]. 1 1896 The American surgeon Emmet Rixford (1865-1938), born in Bedford, Canada, first graduated in engineering and then Doctor in Medicine (1891), and Thomas C.