120 Malpighi. [lect. iv 



which, under the care of the Royal Society, saw the light as his 

 posthumous works, a heavy blow fell upon him, the death of his 

 beloved wife who had stood by his side for so many years. 



On the 28th of November a second stroke of apoplexy 

 came upon him, this time heavy and fatal, and on the following 

 day he passed away. At the post-mortem examination a very 

 large effusion of blood was found in the right ventricle of his 

 brain. By an irony of fate the right kidney of him, who had 

 done so much to clear up the mysteries of renal structure, was 

 found to be marked with old standing disease ; it was largely 

 dilated, and indeed he had for most of his life suffered from 

 renal calculi. 



It may be truly said of Malpighi that whatever part of 

 natural knowledge he touched he left his mark ; he found paths 

 crooked and he left them straight, he found darkness and he left 

 light. Moreover in everything which he did there is the note 

 of the modern man. When we read Harvey we cannot but 

 feel that in spite of all which he did, he in a way belonged to 

 the ancients ; while he was destroying Galen's doctrines he was 

 wearing Galen's clothes, and speaking with Galen's voice. 

 When we pass to Malpighi we seem to be entering into the* 

 ways and thoughts of to-day. Doubtless Malpighi was reaping 

 what Harvey had sown ; doubtless he was also reaping what 

 Galileo had sown ; doubtless also the microscope gave him a 

 tool which none before him had possessed. It was just the 

 putting these three things together which parts him from the 

 old times, and makes him the beginning of the new. 



All the deeper problems of physiology turn on the mutual 

 action of the tissues and the blood, as the stream of the latter 

 sweeps among the elements of the former. Harvey shewed that 

 the blood did sweep through the tissues, Malpighi shewed what 

 the tissues were and how the blood swept through them. And 

 thus the way was opened for those inquiries into the ways 

 in which the blood acts on the tissue and the tissue acts 

 on the blood, inquiries the results of which are the pride of 

 modern times and the hope of times to come. 



