86 Malpighi and the Physiology [lect. 



come into use, and indeed he speaks of the advantages of using 

 optic tubes and microscopes in examining the pores of the 

 parenchymatous tissues, he himself had obviously had but little 

 if any recourse to these aids, and his exposition may be taken 

 as that of the views held before the microscope was effectively 

 used. 



The invention of the microscope, that is of the compound 

 microscope (for the simple lens was occasionally used from very 

 early times), is a matter of some dispute. It has been attributed 

 to Fontana and also to Galileo, but the general opinion is that 

 the first instrument was invented, some time before 1610, 

 possibly in 1590, by the brothers Hans and Zacharias Janssen, 

 of Middleburgh in Holland ; the one made by these is said 

 to have been 1J feet in length. Cornelius Drebbel, of Alkmaar 

 in Holland, is however credited with having made at almost the 

 same time an improved and really effective instrument ; and 

 to him the introduction of this new optical aid is mainly due. 



It was not until many years after its invention that the 

 microscope was seriously applied to anatomical studies. Fran- 

 cisco Stelluti is said to have been the first thus to use it at 

 Rome in 1625, a year after the new invention had found its 

 way to Italy ; but the men who by its use opened up a new 

 path in anatomy and started new ideas were four, Marcello 

 Malpighi of Bologna, Anton van Leeuenhoek of Delft, Robert 

 Hooke of London, and Johannes Swammerdam of Amsterdam. 

 Of these by far the greatest from a physiological point of view 

 was Malpighi. 



Born at Crevalcore, close by Bologna, where his parents, 

 well-to-do people, possessed a small farm, on the 10th of March, 

 1628, the year of the publication of Harvey's book, Marcello 

 Malpighi entered in 1645 the University of Bologna as a 

 student in philosophy. In this he made rapid progress, but in 

 1649 his studies were interrupted by the death almost at the 

 same time of his father, his mother, and his father's mother. 

 Full of affection as a boy, and he was no less so as a man, he 

 was at first prostrated at the loss. Moreover as the eldest of 

 a family of eight, three of whom next to him were girls, his 

 hands were full in the settlement of the patrimony, settlement 



