148 THE MINUTE ANATOMISTS 



I saw him in the very heat of the calamity, and 

 methoughts I never beheld so much Christian patience 

 and philosophy in any man before ; for he comforted his 

 wife, and condoled nothing but the loss of his papers, 

 which are more lamented than the Alexandrian library, 

 or Bartholine's Bibliothece at Copenhagen."^ During a 

 great part of his life Malpighi suffered from calculus in 

 the kidney, and more than once mentions his poor health 

 as an excuse for the imperfections of his writings. 



In 1691 he was pressed to remove to Eome, and 

 become physician to Pope Innocent XII, who had known 

 him during a residence in Bologna some years earlier. 

 Malpighi very reluctantly consented, but his time of 

 service was short. He was seized with a slight apoplectic 

 fit, after which he spent a few weeks in arranging his 

 papers for the printer. In this interval he lost his wife, 

 and a second fit carried him off in November, 1694. 



His portrait by Tobar, presented by Malpighi himself, 

 is still in the possession of the Royal Society. It is a 

 good painting, and shows such a face as might belong to 

 a thoughtful and amiable man. 



THE ANATOMY OF PLANTS 



Every biographer of Malpighi feels bound to repeat 

 the story of the chestnut bough which set him on to 

 study the anatomy of plants. In the memorial volume ^ 

 the incident is related three times in slightly different 

 forms. In the year 1663 Malpighi, it is said, was 

 walking in the garden of his friend, the Visconte Euffo, 

 when he noticed a broken bough of a chestnut tree. 

 From the broken end a number of threads projected, 

 and on examining these with a lens, Malpighi found 



' Correspondence of John Ray, p. 142. 



'^ Marcello Malpighi e V opera siua. Milan, 1907. 



