THE RISE OF EMBRYOLOGY 197 
THE PERIOD OF HARVEY AND MALPIGHI 
In General.—-The usual account of the rise of embryol- 
ogy is derived from German writers. But there is reason to 
depart from their traditions, in which Wolff is heralded as its 
founder, and the one central figure prior to Pander and 
Von Baer. 
The embryological work of Wolff’s great predecessors, 
Harvey and Malpighi, has been passed over too lightly. 
Although these men have received ample recognition in 
closely related fields of investigation, their insight into those 
mysterious events that culminate in the formation of a new 
animal has been rarely appreciated. Now and then a few 
writers, as Brooks and Whitman, have pointed out the great 
worth of Harvey’s work in embryology, but fewer have 
spoken for Malpighi in this connection. Koelliker, it is true, 
in his address at the unveiling of the statue of Malpighi, in 
his native town of Crevalcuore, in 1894, gives him well- 
merited recognition as the founder of embryology, and the 
late Sir \Uichael Foster has written in a similar vein in his 
delightful Lectures on the History of Physiology. 
However great was Harvey’s work in embryology, I ven- 
ture to say that Maipighi’s was greater when considered as a 
piece of observation. Harvcy’s work is more philosophical; 
he discusses the nature of development, and shows unusual 
powers as an accurate reasoner. But that part of his treatise 
devoted to observation is far less extensive and exact than 
Malpighi’s, and throughout his lengthy discussions he has 
the flavor of the ancients. 
Malpighi’s work, on the contrary, flavors more of the 
moderns. In terse descriptions, and with many sketches, he 
shows the changes in the hen’s egg from the close of the first 
day of development onward. 
It is a noteworthy fact that, at the period in which he 
