88 Malpighi and the Physiology [lect. 



his death, a tender, cultivated help-meet. The next year both 

 were plunged in grief by Massari's sudden death ; but in the 

 year after that, in 1656, Malpighi, who meanwhile had been 

 busying himself in medical practice, obtained at last a chair, 

 and was made a Professor of Medicine. 



By that time however his already conspicuous ability 

 had become known outside Bologna, and in the same year 

 Ferdinand II., Grand Duke of Tuscany, always on the look-out 

 to encourage and develope the powers of promising young men, 

 and endeavouring with princely magnificence to make potent 

 and famous the University of Pisa, created for him there a new 

 special chair of Theoretical Medicine, or as we might say, of 

 the Institutes of Medicine, i.e. of Physiology. Malpighi, feeling 

 acutely the opposition to himself and to his family in his native 

 city, accepted the offer. 



Here at Pisa he laboured for three years, enjoying and 

 stimulated by the brilliant intellectual activity of the place, 

 where every effort to extend the bounds of natural knowledge 

 was encouraged by not only the approval but also the material 

 aid of Ferdinand. He profited much by daily intercourse 

 with the bright minds which he met there, more especially 

 with Borelli, who had come to Pisa in the early part of the 

 same year. The two became close friends, being perhaps 

 drawn to each other by the contrasts of their characters. 

 Borelli twenty years older than Malpighi, self-asserting, con- 

 fident, claiming as his own not only what he had done but at 

 times what had been done by others, angry if his own merits 

 were not fully acknowledged, impatient of the praises of others, 

 bore himself, as we have said, in daily life with a taciturn 

 coldness if not with a rough fretfulness, which kept many who 

 admired his talents from looking upon him as a friend. Malpighi, 

 kindly even to softness, ready to give his affections to those 

 who seemed drawn to him, devoted wholly to those who had 

 won his love, modest and retiring even to timidity, bold only in 

 the interests of truth and right, never in his own, lived a life 

 such as the sweet delicate outlines of his face bespoke, beloved 

 for the sake of himself, even by those who were not competent 

 to judge of his talents and his works. Two things the two had' 



