Tomaso Casoni (1880–1933): A Pioneer Remembered

Background Tomaso Casoni (Figure 1A &1B) earned his fame by the test named after him [1]. Casoni was first to describe a test for immediate allergic reaction to hydatid fluid injected into the skin (Figure 2). This was in a time when hydatid disease caused by infection by Echinococcus granlulosus was endemic in Europe, Africa and the Middle East in addition to many other parts of the world. Therefore such finding was of great clinical significance at that time. However, as the skin test was increasingly replaced by other serological diagnostic methodology [2], the credit to Casoni has been fading away from the memory of medical and scientific community except for a few old Italian monographs [3-5]. There is a paucity of information on his life and works in the English literature even in the specialized web pages dedicated to history of science and medicine. A search using “Tomaso Casoni” as the search term on the internet’s two most commonly used search engines (Yahoo and Google) failed to find any substantial material. Thirty years ago, I was amongst a group of junior medical students in Tripoli, Libya. We learned for the first time about Casoni and his test from a small print foot note in “Bailey and Love’s Short Practice of Surgery”. We were so pleased that such a major textbook mentioned the institution where we were studying though its name changed to “Tripoli Central Hospital” following the independence of Libya. This event stimulated the interest of many in the history of science and medicine .