iv] of Glands and Tissues. 101 



of the tongue, when well dried, remained dry when kept ex- 

 tended out of the mouth, shewed him that the papilla* could 

 not be structures whose purpose was to secrete fluid. He 

 traced the distribution of the nerves to them and concluded 

 that they were organs of taste. Having arrived at this view, 

 the thought occurred to him that the sense of touch might be 

 served by similar organs in the skin whose general structure 

 was so like that of the tongue. Knowing what to look for, he 

 soon found that for which he was seeking. He was soon able 

 to demonstrate the existence of papillae in the skin ; and the 

 fact that they were most abundant in those regions in which 

 the sense of touch was most acute convinced him that he had 

 in them discovered the organs of touch. 



At the same time he published also in a letter to his old 

 fellow student at Bologna, Fracassato, a tract on the anatomy 

 of the brain (Be cerebro exercitatio epistolica). An important 

 work on this subject had in 1664 been published by the 

 Englishman Willis, whose name remains to us in the terra 

 'circle of Willis.' That book, of which as well as of other 

 labours of Willis I hope to speak in the proper place, contains 

 much that is valuable, but it was as yet unknown to Malpighi, 

 whose results were arrived at independently. 



In this iract he shews with the help of the microscope that 

 the white matter consists of round but flattened little fibres 

 arranged in bundles whose course is difficult to follow, but 

 which in any case form tracts connecting the surface of the 

 brain with various regions of the spinal cord. He further 

 shews that the grey matter is not confined to the surface of the 

 brain where it is called cortex, but exists in scattered masses 

 in the interior, disposed around the ventricles, and along the 

 spinal cord. The nature of this grey matter he is in this 

 tract unwilling to define exactly, but when he returned to the 

 subject a little later he concluded that it was of a glandular 

 nature. 



In this he was misled by his success in investigating 

 the glandular organs in general, the results of his inquiries 

 into which were published in 1666, the year he left Messina, 

 under the title of De viscerum structura exercitatio anatomica. 



