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masterly genius made use of his knowledge of comparative anatomy, to 

 add a big corner-stone to the stately edifice he was building. Malpighi, 

 like another whose histological researches are the outcome of the judi- 

 cious choice of the appropriate object of study combined with the 

 "seeing eye : ' — I mean L. Kanvier, Professor of General Anatomy in 

 the College de France, Paris,— had recourse, to the lung of the frog. 

 What does not humanity owe to that paragon of animals from a 

 physiological point of view ? Consider ! The " missing link " of the 

 capillaries was found in its lung by Malpighi. The first accurate 

 descriptions of red blood corpuscles by Swammerdam, and later by 

 Leeuwenhoek, were made on its blood. Is not the basis of the 

 physiology of muscle established on experiments on its gastrocnemius ? 

 Did not Pfluger establish that oxydation does take place in the 

 tissues and not in the blood by his famous experiments on a frog, 

 with all the blood washed out of its vessels and replaced by normal 

 saline solution ? As to its heart, has it not been cut, ligatured, and 

 stimulated with all forms of stimuli, electrical and chemical ? The 

 names of Descartes and Stannius — dear old Stannius in far-off 

 Rostock, the writer of an incomparable treatise on comparative 

 anatomy — are associated with the early study of its physiology. On it 

 the brothers Weber established the first fundamental experiment on 

 cardiac inhibition. On it also Gaskell solved the problem of the 

 course of accelerator and inhibitory impulses. On its spinal 

 cord Johannes Miiller confirmed the doctrine of the functions of 

 the anterior and posterior roots of a spinal nerve ; and was it not on 

 a piece of the sciatic nerve of a frog— two inches in length — that 

 Helmholtz measured the velocity of a nerve impulse, a problem that 

 a few years before his great master J. Miiller declared to be 

 impossible of solution ? Joseph Lister made his early observations on 

 its pigment cells, and his researches on its vaso-motor nerves, and 

 Waller his researches on the papillae of its tongue. Its tissues, the 

 cornea, and other parts have been the grounds on which many a battle 

 royal regarding inflammation has been conducted ; and so on. All 

 this is directly beside the mark, but it indicates the importance of 

 selecting a suitable animal for experiment. Returning now to 

 Malpighi's observations with the microscope. In 1665, when 

 examining the omentum of a guinea-pig he saw little flat red bodies 

 which he took to be fat. They were the red blood corpuscles ; he, 

 however, did not recognise them as such. That extraordinary 

 observer, Jan Swammerdam, had seen and described the red blood 

 corpuscles in the frog in 1658, i.e., seven years before Malpighi. 

 Swammerdam died in 1680, and his great work, Biblia Natnrce, 

 was not published until 1738, by his countryman the indefatigable 

 Boerhaave. It was when examining the lung of a frog that Malpighi 

 saw a " certain great thing," " magnum certum opus oculis video " 



