[Malaria and the work of two writer-physicians: Louis Ferdinand Celine and Carlo Levi]. / Le paludisme dans l'oeuvre de deux écrivains médecins: Louis Ferdinand Céline et Carlo Levi.

Malaria rarely mentioned in literary works has been dealt with by the two writers, both physicians, studied here. Louis-Ferdinand Destouches (1894-1961) alias Celine, studied medicine in Rennes and Paris from 1921 to 1924. He had been previously engaged by the Rockefeller Foundation to lecture on tuberculosis in Brittany. He later worked for the Commission of Hygiene of the League of Nations in Geneva and took part in 1925 to a long voyage in America (Cuba, United States) and Italy where malaria was still occurring. In 1926 he published a book: La quinine en therapeutique and participated to another voyage in West Africa where he contracted malaria. Numerous hints to this disease inspired to Celine by his first trip to Africa (Cameroun) in 1916-17 are found in Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932). Carlo Levi (1902-1975) studied medicine in Torino from 1919 to 1924. Painter and writer he wrote there his masterpiece: Christ has stopped in Eboli (1945). Malaria which then decimated a very poor population of peasants abandoned to themselves represents the background of the book and it is as a competent and human physician that C. Levi gained the friendship of the inhabitants of this remote and inhospitable province.

[A great Franco-Mauritian epidemiologist: Joseph Désiré Tholozan (1820-18970]. / Un grand épidémiologiste franco-mauricien: Joseph Désiré Tholozan (1820-1897).

Born in 1820 from French parents in Diego Garcia, an islet then linked to Mauritius where he started in Port-Louis his school years, Joseph Désiré Tholozan was an original personality. He undertook medical studies in France (M. D. thesis, Paris, 1843) after having joined the military Health Service (1841) as a surgeon serving in various garrisons in the country and later at the Hospital of the Valde-Grâce in Paris (1849). Successful at the "agrégation" of Medicine in 1853, he later participated to the Crimean War (1854-1855) where he performed-interesting medical observations. In 1858, he was appointed personal physician to Nasreddin Shah and remained in Persia until his death in Teheran (1897) where he is buried. Tholozan published between 1847 and 1892 over fifty articles and books dealing chiefly with infectious pathology and epidemiology, written at a time when microbial etiology and specificity of such diseases were wholly unknown. He considered chiefly bubonic plague, studying as soon as 1871 the focus of the Iranian Kurdistan, a research which will be resumed by M. Baltazard and his collaborators between 1947 and 1971, i.e. a century later. He was also deeply interested by the "oriental" cholera of which he recalled masterly the history and geography in the Near and Middle East. He also performed, while in Crimea and Persia, personal observations on tuberculosis, diptheria, remittent fever, acrodynia and had studied in France in his early years various other diseases such as cutaneous staphylococcic infections, glanders, pulmonary haemorrhagies, etc. In Persia, he reorganized Public Health and medical teaching and educated many local physicians and surgeons. Being assured of the unlimited confidence of the Shah, he played an important cultural role, promoting French influence in Persia. Holder of many French and foreign decorations, Tholozan was Fellow of the French Academies of Sciences and Medicine. His name was given by Laboulbène to Ornithodoros tholozani, a tick vector of a recurrent fever (spirochetosis due to Borrelia persica), of which he had described both the symptoms and the vector in 1882.

[Tholozan: military physician]. / Tholozan: médecin militaire à compétence étendue.

Born in 1820 Joseph-Desire Tholozan joined in 1841 as "chirurgien sous-aide auxiliaire" the French military Health Service, being still a medical student in Marseille where the School of Medicine was directed by his uncle F. Cauviere. He was later appointed at the hospital of Bastia, obtained his M.D. (Paris 1843), went back to Marseille and later to Metz (1845) and Paris, at the Val-de-Grace (1846-47). He returned there as assistant physician (1851) and later as professor "agrege" of Medicine (1852), his agregation thesis devoted to hematology being presided by Andral. Tholozan later participated to the Crimean war (1854-55) during which he performed important observations on infectious diseases (cholera, dysentery, typhus, typhoid fever) or deficiency ones (scurvy, acrodynia). An unpublished report given here deals with a probable epidemic of murine typhus occurring in soldiers returning from Crimea on an American ship which had been used to transport horses. Promoted first class major physician (1857) Tholozan was chosen in 1858 by the French ministry of Foreign Affairs to become the physician of the Shah of Persia, Nasreddin Shah. In this country where he remained until his death (1897) he will have a threefold activity as organizer of the medical teaching, epidemiologist (of plague and cholera) and as a surgeon. Principal first class physician (the equivalent of Physician-Colonel) in 1868, he was definitely dismissed from the Army in 1880.

[Tholozan and Persia]. / Tholozan et la Perse.

Tholozan arrived in Persia in 1858 and remained there until his death in 1897. Personal physician of Nasreddin Shah with the title of hakim bachi, he was also appointed director of the Medical School of Teheran founded in 1850. He trained many Persian physicians and wrote medical treatises printed in persian. In 1866 he married in Teheran a widow of greco-italian origin from whom he had a daughter, Elise, who will have many descendants. Besides his important monographs on epidemic diseases (plague, cholera, etc.) Tholozan wrote in 1869 a "Rapport a S.M. le Shah sur l'etat de l'hygiene en Perse". He accompanied the Shah during his three voyages in Europe (1873, 1878, 1889) and stayed for his health three years in France after the last one, being replaced by Dr. Feuvrier as physician of the Shah. The friendly relations between Tholozan and the French archeologists Marcel and Jane Dieulafoy for whom he obtained from the Shah the permission to undertake diggings at Susa are recalled with the help of unpublished documents.

[Rayer's influence on parasitology (with unpublished documents)]. / Rayer et son influence en parasitologie (avec des documents inédits).

The important contribution of P. Rayer to parasitology (human and animal) had never been studied so far. It includes chiefly a dozen papers published in Archives de Médecine comparée (1842-43), a creation of Rayer. They deal with myxosporidia, helminths (nematodes, trematodes) and ectoparasitic insects. In the same periodical are published important parasitological contributions from germanic authors (J. Müller, G. Simon, A. de Nordmann). Three other papers from Rayer (1838, 1850) are devoted to human parasitic diseases (urinary bilharziosis, wuchereriasis) of which the exact etiology was still ignored. Two unpublished letters from G. Breschet and H. M. Edwards to Rayer dealing with the 1842-43 papers are given here. The contribution of Rayer's disciples to parasitology is then recalled: C. Davaine (the most important), Ch. Robin and J.A. Laboulbène.

[Francesco Redi and the birth of experimental parasitology]. / Francesco Redi et la naissance de la parasitologie expérimentale.

Francesco Redi (1626-1697) born in Arezzo (Tuscany, Italy), an encyclopedic mind simultaneously naturalist, physician and poet is the founder of scientific and experimental parasitology by his works published in 1668 and 1684. In the first he showed the impossibility of spontaneous generation of insects (flies) and in the second are described over hundred species of parasites (helminths, mites, insects) from vertebrates and invertebrates with excellent illustrations. He has also recommended various antiparasitic remedies and specified their pharmacological action. It is besides under his influence that two of his disciples: Bonomo and Cestoni will rediscover and redescribe in 1687 the itch-mite (Sarcoptes scabiei var. hominis).

[A challenged Nobel Prize: Johannes Fibiger, 1926]. / Un prix Nobel discuté: Johannes Fibiger, 1926.

Johannes Fibiger born in Denmark in 1867 died in 1928 from a cancer of the colon. First interested in bacteriology he became later (1900) professor of pathological anatomy. His chief work on the alleged cancerigenous role of a nematode Gonglyonema neoplasticum in some species of rats allowed him to receive the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1926. The difficulties met later (species of Gongylonema spp. from rats, dietary, lack of vitamin A) and even the impossibility to reproduce his results have brought a contestation of his work. However the cancerigenous action of some parasitic heminths such as Schistosoma is now recognized.

[Historical note on the discovery of cutaneous leishmaniasis transmission by Phlebotomus]. / Note historique sur la découverte de la transmission de la leishmaniose cutanée par les phlébotomes.

In the last edition of Morton's medical Bibliography (1991) the discovery of the transmission of old world cutaneous leishmaniasis by phlebotomes is attributed to english-speaking authors having published between 1924 and 1942. In fact this discovery resulting from researches undertaken since 1904 is due to the team of the Institut Pasteur d'Algerie (E. & E. SERGENT and collaborators) and was published in 1921. We further recall the two meetings of the Société de pathologie exotique held in Paris on february 8 & 9 1933 during which were exposed the results obtained in Palestine & Syria by ADLER & THEODOR (1925-1929) who implicitly recognized the priority of the French workers of the Institut Pasteur d'Algérie.

[Historical brief on the fever of Malta]. / Bref historique de la fièvre de Malte.

Malta fever (brucellosis) is an infectious disease of cattle (chiefly goats) which can infect man. Although the disease is not limited to Malta, occurring also in other mediterranean countries as well as in Asia and America, it was originally described in 1863 in Malta where the responsible bacteria (Brucella melitensis) was discovered in 1887 by D. Bruce. Ten years later Wright & Smith (1897) showed that the agglutination test originally established for typhoidic patients could be used for the diagnosis of Malta fever. Finally the conclusions of the Commission for the investigation of Mediterranean fever (1905-1907) are briefly recalled.

Pierre François Olive Rayer (1793-1867).

Pierre François Olive Rayer is an important figure in French medicine and medical biology of the second half of the nineteenth century, although he is scarcely recognized as such even in his own country.

[Former observations of urinary bilharziasis and wuchereriosis]. / Sur des observations anciennes de bilharziose urinaire et de wuchérériose.

On the occasion of a book near completion on the great clinician Pierre Rayer (1793-1867), a pioneer of infectious pathology, are presented here two of his works concerning parasitic tropical pathology. The first (1838) signed by Rayer alone deals with an hematuria observed in patients from Mauritius. He distinguished several forms of the disease and described 15 observations which he compared to Egyptian hematuria of which the parasitic agent (Bilharzia (= Schistosoma) haematobium) will not be described before 1852 by Th. Bilharz. A very recent paper by Julvez (1992) confirms the persistence of this parasitic disease in Mauritius. The second paper published in 1850 with his disciple Casimir Davaine (1812-1882) concerns a case of elephantiasis of the Arabs (wuchereriosis) occurring in Guadeloupe (French West Indies). The authors describe carefully the anatomo-pathological features of the amputated hand and forearm of the patient. They could not be aware of the parasitic etiology of the disease which although suspected by J. Hendy (1784) will be demonstrated only during the second half of last century (Demarquay, 1863; Wucherer, 1866; Lewis, 1870 and Bancroft 1876 who observed microfilariae and filariae of the Nematode presently named Wuchereria bancrofti in the blood and lymph of the patients). Its transmission by mosquitoes (Aedes, Culex) will be demonstrated by P. Manson (1878). These little-known observations are examples of clinical descriptions of tropical parasitic disease before the discovery of the parasites involved. As such they deserved to be recalled here.