SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 159 



Italian Francisco Stelluti's study of the structure of the bee, which was 

 published in Rome in 16x5. But foremost among those who systematically- 

 based their research on magnifying apparatus must be mentioned the Italian 

 Malpighi. 



Marcello Malpighi was born in i6i8 at Cavalcuorc, a place near Bo- 

 logna, where his father owned an estate. Here Marcello spent his childhood. 

 At an early age he became a student at Bologna and devoted himself to the 

 study of Aristotelean philosophy. He had to break off his studies, however, 

 upon the death of both his parents, in 1649, ^^'^ ^^'^ ^^ leave the University 

 for a year or two in order to settle his father's affairs and look after his 

 younger brothers and sisters. With this latter end in view he returned to the 

 University, after a short time graduated as a doctor (in 1653), and then 

 devoted himself to medical practice and university teaching. His brilliant 

 gifts were soon apparent, but certain intrigues delayed his advancement, and 

 when at last — in 1656 — the Senate of Bologna instituted a professorship 

 for his special benefit, he preferred to accept an appointment to a chair of 

 medicine at Pisa. There he got to know Borelli, and their acquaintance de- 

 veloped into a lifelong, firm friendship, Borelli in the beginning possessed 

 a tutorial influence over his colleague, who was twenty years younger, and 

 taught him to realize the defects in the Aristoteleanism which he had till 

 then embraced. Malpighi, however, considering that the climate of Pisa was 

 bad for his health, returned once more to Bologna, but shortly afterwards 

 he was called, upon Borelli's recommendation, to be professor at Messina, 

 at a good salary. After four years, however, he relinquished this appoint- 

 ment, owing to intrigues and troublesome interference on the part of the 

 authorities. So for the third time — in 1666 — he returned to Bologna, 

 where a professorship awaited him, which he held with honour for twenty- 

 five years. In 1691, being then in his sixty-fourth year and in failing health, 

 he went to Rome and became private physician to the Pope, and he died 

 there of apoplexy three years later — in 1694. 



In contrast to most of the biologists of the earlier period, but like so 

 many of those of the present day, Malpighi published his observations not 

 in large consecutive works, but in the form of short reports, sometimes com- 

 prising only a few pages, usually sent in to the Royal Society of London, 

 of which he was a member and which undertook the printing of them. Prac- 

 tically every one of these small papers contained some important discovery 

 in different branches of biology. The connecting link in this literary work 

 is not any common idea running through it all, but is represented by micro- 

 scopical technology, which Malpighi with hitherto unrivalled genius ap- 

 plied to every imaginable object in living nature that came within his range. 

 Thus Malpighi was the founder of microscopical anatomy in both the ;:nimal 

 and the vegetable kingdoms. One reason for the disconnected way in which 



