90 Malpighi and the Physiology [lect. 



busying himself among other things with experiments on the 

 blood more or less chemical, the results of which he recorded 

 after the fashion of the time in a Dialogue between a Galenist 

 and a surgeon of the new school. This however he did not 

 publish, and the manuscript was accidentally burnt years after 

 when his house took fire. 



Meanwhile the domestic difficulties touching the paternal 

 estates at home increased rather than diminished; and probably 

 in part in order to be on the spot but also for the reason stated 

 by himself that the humid climate of Pisa, trying to many at 

 the present day, was injuring his health, he asked permission 

 of Ferdinand to resign his chair and returned to his native 

 city. 



Here he resumed office as a Professor of Medicine, and, in 

 spite of domestic troubles and anxieties, pursued his researches 

 to such good effect that he was able in the next year, 1660, to 

 announce privately to Borelli his discovery of the structure of 

 the lung, an account of which was published in the year 

 following. But his native city did not keep him long. In 

 1662, the chief or first chair of Medicine in the University of 

 Messina, then active, flourishing and ambitious, had become 

 vacant, through the death of P. Castello, and the senate, led to 

 do so by the urgent advice of Borelli, who as we said in the 

 last lecture had been professor there, offered, in April, the chair 

 to Malpighi, accompanying the offer with the promise of a 

 handsome salary, as well as an adequate sum for the expenses 

 of the journey. Malpighi for a while hesitated, distrusting 

 his mental as well as his physical powers, but persuaded by 

 Borelli, and influenced perhaps by dislike of the intrigues 

 against him and his family going on in Bologna, finally ac- 

 cepted and after a brief stay at Naples on the way out entered 

 upon his duties in the autumn of the same year. 



Here for some four years, years fertile as we shall see in ideas, 

 he remained, unwearied in labours of research, content with 

 his position and with his work. Here he began a number of 

 inquiries, some of which brought forth results ready almost 

 at once to be made known, but others of which needed for 

 their completion the toil of many years yet to come. Living 



