409 
NOTES BEARING ON SPALLANZANI, LEWIS AND 
COBBOLD, WHOSE PORTRAITS APPEAR IN 
PARASITOLOGY, XIV, Nos. 3—4. 
Portrait-plates XVIII—XX. 
(Continued from p. 177.) 
L’Abbate Spallanzani. 
1729—1799. 
(Portrait-plate XVIII.) 
By Wm BULLOCH, F.B.S. 
Lazzaro Spallanzani, one of the great natural philosophers of the eighteenth 
century, was born in 1729 at Scandiano, and was educated in Reggio and in 
Bologna where he came under the influence of his cousin Laura Bassi who was 
professor of mathematics and physics there. He was intended for the law but 
at the age of 28, having taken holy orders, he became professor of Greek, 
logic and mathematics in the College of Reggio. It was here that he began to 
interest himself in biological questions and by correspondence he became 
associated with Charles Bonnet and Haller in Switzerland. In 1760 he accepted 
a chair in the University of Modena where he remained eight years. This was 
one of the most fertile periods of his life for in addition to dissertations on 
Greek inscriptions, on problems in mathematics and physics he produced his 
epoch-making works on spontaneous generation, on the regeneration of lost 
parts and on the circulation of the blood. By the end of the Modena period he 
was elected F.R.S. and was known as one of the foremost scientists of his time. 
In 1768 he was appointed by the Empress Maria Teresa to be the Conservator 
of the Museum of natural history in Pavia and he held this post till his death 
in 1799. In 1776 he published his great Opuscoli di fisica animate e vegetabile 
and in 1780 Dissertazioni di fisica animate e vegetabile , works which must 
compel the most captious critic to range the Italian abbate among the greatest 
experimental philosophers of all time. In these works he dealt exhaustively 
with the problems of spontaneous generation, and the origin of the animalcules 
of infusions, the nature and origin of spermatozoa, the effect of stagnant air 
on animals and vegetables, the death and resurrection of animals, the nature 
of moulds, digestion and generation. In addition to his research and teaching 
