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Name: CASTELLANI, Aldo (Dr.)
Birth Date: 8 Sep 1877 Florence
Death Date: 3 Oct 1971 Cascais, Portugal
Nationality: Italian
First Date: 1902
Last Date: 1903
Profession: Bacteriologist
Area: Uganda
Married: In Kensington 1906 Josephine French Ambler Stead b. 25 May 1875, d. 3 Dec 1974 Eastbourne
Children: Jacqueline (Lampson)
Book Reference: North
School: Univ of Florence
General Information:
North - Appt. Member of Royal Society Special Medical Commission on Sleeping Sickness, arr. Mombasa from England 3-7-1902; at Entebbe 25-12-1902; recommended for post of Bacteriologist UP by Dr R.U. Moffat, Dec 1902; Dep. Uganda for Europe, ill, March 1903. Recommendation for post of Bacteriologist withdrawn, 'The behaviour of Dr Castellani during the last 2 months in Uganda ……. were marked by an absence of dignity, discretion and straight forwardness' (Moffat, FO 2) 22-5-1903; 'An awful bounder' (Moffat, RH)
1939 England and Wales Register living alone in London - gived birth date as 8 Sep 1877
Long entry in Who's Who, where he calls himself Professor Marchese Count Aldo Castellani, DSC, Hereditary Count of Kisymaio. In Nat Probate Calendar he has a knighthood, but he was Hon, knight.
Wikipedia entry Castellani was born in
Florence and educated there, qualifying in medicine in 1899. He worked for a time in
Bonn and joined the
School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London in 1901. As bacteriologist with the Royal Society Commission on
Sleeping Sickness in 1902, he went to
Entebbe, Uganda with
George Carmichael Low and
Cuthbert Christy. He demonstrated the cause and means of transmission of sleeping sickness, discovered the
spirochete of
yaws, and did other original work in bacteriology and in
parasitic diseases of the skin. In 1903 he was appointed Bacteriologist to the Government of
Ceylon at the Central laboratory in
Colombo and continued research in mycology and bacteriology, describing several new species of
intestinal bacilli. He invented the absorption test for the
serological identification of closely allied organisms. He left Ceylon in 1915 for
Naples where he took the Chair of Medicine. He was involved during
World War I in Serbia and Macedonia as a member of the Inter-Allied Sanitary Commission.
In 1919 Castellani went to London as Consultant to the Ministry of Pensions. He became lecturer on mycology and mycotic diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and established a consulting practice in Harley Street. He was knighted in 1928 as an Honorary KCMG and in 1934 his daughter Jacqueline Castellani married Sir Miles Lampson.
Castellani's enthusiasm for Royal and eminent patients such as Benito Mussolini clouded his reputation and during World War II he supported Italy against the Allies, becoming chief of the Italian Army's medical service. War correspondent Alaric Jacob discovered his looted quarters in Cirene in December 1941 and was tempted to pass his correspondence to his son in law Sir Miles Lampson, then British Ambassador in Egypt.
Castellani was President of the International Society of Dermatology from 1960–1964, which he had founded in 1959. He was also professor of tropical medicine at the State University of Louisiana and also at the Royal University of Rome. He followed the Queen of Italy Marie José into exile in Portugal and ended his life as Professor at Lisbon's Institute of Tropical Medicine. Castellani died in 1971. Castellani's paint (Carbol fuchsin solution) is still occasionally used to treat fungal skin infections.
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