94 Malpighi and the Physiology [lect. 



treatise presented in the form of a letter to the Royal Society, 

 the first of his books published by that body. 



This was his chief work in comparative anatomy, a model 

 work of supreme excellence, but he also made many other 

 valuable observations on various animals, vertebrate and in- 

 vertebrate. 



Malpighi was no mere professor, his time was not spent 

 wholly in the laboratory and lecture room. He was actively 

 engaged in healing the sick, he w r as as familiar with the 

 phenomena of disease as with the phenomena of the healthy 

 living being. He brought to bear on the former the same 

 clear intellect which he turned towards the latter, seeking to 

 find out the causes of the events which he witnessed. He 

 was as busy in the post-mortem room as in the dissecting 

 theatre, and his writings on the characters and causes of disease 

 justify us in claiming for him the merit of having laid the 

 foundations of scientific pathology. 



But it is not of Malpighi as botanist, as embryologist, as 

 naturalist, as pathologist, or as biologist, for from his varied 

 studies he stands out as the man who first of all others laid 

 firm hold of the fundamental principle of the essential identity 

 of vegetable and animal life, that I have here to speak. He was 

 all these, but he was also the first who calling into his aid the 

 newly invented microscope, opened up the way for a true grasp 

 of the minute structure of the tissues and organs of the animal 

 body, and in so doing opened up also a new branch of physiology. 

 He was the first histologist, and with the new histology came 

 new ideas of the functions of many important parts of the body. 



To Vesalius, to Fabricius and to Harvey, who looked upon 

 the animal body as composed of a number of organs deftly 

 joined together, the problems of physiology presented themselves 

 as a number of special problems of a mechanical nature, capable 

 of being solved by mechanical methods, except in so far as, to 

 use Vesalius' words, the qualities of the proper substance of 

 each organ supplied the determining factor of its functions. 

 The microscope revealed to Malpighi features of structure 

 transcending mere mechanical notions. He saw that the tissues 

 in their minuter structure were governed by laws of their own, 



