Gustavo Pittaluga Fattorini Biography

Gustavo Pittaluga Fattorini

(Florence, 1876-Havana, 1956) Spanish physician.A scholar of recognized international prestige, he dedicated himself to research on endemic diseases of equatorial Africa and was Professor of Parasitology at the University of Madrid.

He studied Medicine at the University of Rome, where he received his doctorate with a thesis on acromegaly.He was for several years Battista Grassi's assistant, with whom he devoted himself to researching malaria-transmitting insects.In 1903 he arrived in Madrid as a speaker at the International Congress of Medicine, to which he presented a communication on the etiology and epidemiology of malaria.From this moment he settled in Spain and, together with a group of doctors who rallied around him, continued his work as a parasitologist here.

In collaboration with Francisco Huertas, among others, he published, Investigations and studies on malaria in Spain (1903), an excellent work in which the first map of the distribution of malaria appears in the country, as well as a historical bibliography essay.In 1905 he entered as head of the disinfection service of the National Institute of Hygiene directed by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, and two years later he went to the parasitology section of the same institute.

Gustavo Pittaluga organized and directed the commission that, in 1909, studied endemic diseases in Fernando Póo and other Spanish colonies in the Gulf of Guinea.The report published as a result of these investigations was an excellent study of "sleeping sickness." He also highlighted the existence of infantile Kala-azar on the Spanish Mediterranean coast.

In 1913 he obtained the Chair of Parasitology and Tropical Pathology at the University of Madrid, in whose laboratories he carried out interesting investigations on morphology and physiology sanguine, which he exhibited in several articles published in Archives of Cardiology and Hematology , a journal he edited together with Luis Calandre.In all of them, his concern for the genetic issue and his knowledge of Mendel's theories stand out.This marked the beginning of an important Spanish hematological school.

Pittaluga was also the promoter of the Technical Malaria Service, and later the Health Service of the Mancomunidad de Catalunya.As interesting as his scientific production was his work as director of the school and later of the National Institute of Health.His activities in these positions contributed to broadening the concept of health, which became increasingly preventive medicine and social hygiene, giving great importance to food hygiene and health engineering and architecture.

Pittaluga maintained a keen interest in the philosophy of science, reaching the chair of scientific philosophy at the School of Higher Studies of the Ateneo de Madrid.He applied the theories of knowledge of Ernst Mach, Herbert Spencer, and others to biology.Alluding to the antagonism between the intuitive and the logical process, Pittaluga concluded that in biology "there is a possibility of subjective interpretation of the phenomena of limits much broader than in the exact sciences." Therefore, the biologist has to refine his ability to accurately perceive reality, since biological phenomena offer an individuality that physical phenomena do not have, with their mathematical expressions.Without this preparation, "there can be no intuition of the truth in biology".

During the Second Republic he was a deputy in the Constituent Cortes.After the Civil War ended and the Franco regime was established, Pittaluga went into exile to Cuba, where he was appointed head of the Department of Climatology and Experimental Hydrology of the Ministry of Health and founded a new scientific journal, the Archives of the National Institute of Hydrology and Medical Climatology .

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