118 Malplghi and the Physiology [lect. 



" pressing the chambers of the spleen, in structure and fashion 

 " not unlike what is seen in the larger auricles of the heart." 

 He thus shewed that the spleen was not a gland, either 

 conglomerate or conglobate, but a contractile vascular organ 

 such as we now recognize it to be. But he also recognized the 

 possibility of changes of a peculiar nature taking place in the 

 spleen pulp filling up the chambers just alluded to, all the 

 more so since he was the first to observe small white bodies, 

 not unlike glands, attached to the blood vessels, bodies which 

 have ever since borne the name of Malpighian corpuscles. He 

 also called attention to the remarkable reticular sheath which 

 accompanies and wraps round the arteries as these plunge into 

 the body of the organ. 



All these several fundamental discoveries were made before 

 he left Messina to take up his abode in his native city. During 

 his long stay in Bologna he continued to labour at anatomical 

 problems of physiological interest, and wrote important treatises, 

 such as those on the uterus, on hairs, horns, bone, on the 

 polypus of the heart, and especially one on the lymphatic 

 glands published by the Royal Society in 1689 (De structura 

 ■glandularum conglobatarum, consimiliumque partium); yet 

 none of these made known results at all equal in importance to 

 those on which we have just dwelt. During this time his 

 intellectual strength was chiefly spent on researches not dis- 

 tinctly physiological, such as those on the anatomy of plants, 

 on the formation of the chick, on the natural history of the silk- 

 worm, and others. 



The years slipped away without any striking event breaking 

 the even tenour of his way. His winters he spent in the city 

 busy with his professorial and professional duties ; his summers, 

 as we have seen, were periods of repose and yet of labour in his 

 summer retreat. In 1662 he bought a villa and small estate at 

 Corticella in the neighbourhood of the city, and the possession 

 of a country house of his own led him, as years grew upon him, 

 more and more into rural retirement. In 1684 a great mis- 

 fortune befell him. His house in Bologna caught fire, his 

 microscopes were ruined and many of his precious manuscripts 

 were burnt. The loss of his furniture and such like things he 



