MALPIGHI 161 



and said in his treatise De Respiratione that Malpighi 

 had omitted the brain, but this was unjust. Malpighi 

 complained that his anatomy of the silkworm, the first 

 of its kind, had been censured "rigorose et austere 

 nimis." ^ 



MINOR ZOOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES 

 Malpighi's smaller discoveries are so many that it 

 would weary the reader even to name them. Among 

 other things he observed the liver-fluke, the cystic stage 

 of the tapeworm and the development of a feather.^ 

 We learn from his diary that he had dissected many 

 animals which he never found time to describe. The 

 day before his death he dictated a short account of the 

 ear of an eagle, and signed it with a trembling hand, 

 begging that it might be added to his anatomy of the 

 eagle. ^ 



PHYSIOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES 



Malpighi's revelation of the capillary circulation and 

 the structure of the lung was his first, or almost his first, 

 and (there can be little doubt) his greatest discovery ; it 

 was moreover the first important discovery made with 

 the help of the microscope. 



In the year 1660, shortly after his return from Pisa 

 to Bologna, Malpighi, now in his thirty-third year, 

 undertook a re-examination of the structure of the 

 lung, in company with his colleague Fracassati. The 

 lung had been hitherto supposed to be a mass of flesh 

 and blood, infiltrated with air, but Malpighi soon found 

 reason to suspect that it was really cellular. A washed- 



' Op. Posth. p. 61, first pagination. 



2 This last research is of later date than that of Poupart on the samo 

 subject {infra, j). 232). 



•'Already jirinted in his letters to the Royal Society, which were issuod in 

 1007 as his Opera PoHthuma. 



L 



