Malpighi Research Articles

Hahnemann in his time

In July 1986 an 'Open Letter' by Dr M. S. Rao was publ ished/ I do not wish to deal with most of the points raised. These were answered in the same edition of this journal. However there is one statement in that letter which requires discussion. Dr Rao states: 'May I suggest that we put our house in order by believing in the philosophical system inherent in homoeopathy and preaching it without too much compromise.' It can be argued that philosophy is not inherent in hom0eopathy and that the only inherent idea is similia similibus curentur. But if the statement were true, to which philosophy does it refer: that of Hahnemann, of Hering, of Kent? However, it is probable that the idea behind Dr Rao's plea would find sympathy among many homeeopaths, so that it should not merely be dismissed. If we assume that the philosophy referred to is that of Hahnemann, we cannot attempt to judge its value unless we understand what he meant when he spoke of vital principle, of miasm and of the evolution of skin diseases which he regarded as an essential part of chronic disease. In this respect it must be remembered that Hahnemann was essentially a being of the eighteenth century. By the time he published The ~Medicine of Experience he was fifty years of age. Although he produced ideas which differed from those of his contemporaries, it would be ridiculous to assume that he was not a man of his time and that his thinking was not, primarily, that of an eighteenth-century doctor. In order, therefore, to understand and judge his philosophy we have to understand his medical background. Until the seventeenth century medicine was based on a mixture of folklore and the ideas of classical physicians, of whom the most important was Galen. Medicine was concerned more with the condition of the sick man rather than specific conditions. Pathological theory concerned itself with body fluids or humors, or with constricted or relaxed conditions of the solid parts (solidism). Because of Galen humoral pathology was more popular and even in the mid seventeenth century physicians concerned themselves with the humors rather than particular diseases. However a few conditions such as smallpox and leprosy were recognized. During the seventeenth century science began to make great strides with the work of Galileo, Newton and Boyle. Medicine followed with a reaction against the vitalism of Galen. Harvey described the circulation of the blood. Sydenham began to distinguish between the individual and his symptom picture and thus described entities such as measles, syphilis and gout. Andreas Vesalius (1514-64) had already, by human dissection, corrected the anatomy of Galen which was based , in part, on animals. Three years after the death of Harvey, Marcello Malpighi (1628-94) demonstrated the capillary circulation and used the new microscope of Anton van Leeuwenhoek to lay the foundations of histology. Progress continued at what must have seemed a fi'ightening rate. At Leyden, Boerhaave, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, introduced bedside teaching and correlated clinical with post mortem findings. His pupil, Albrecht von HaUer (1708-77), preached empiricism and scientific experiment. Cullen, whose book led Hahnemann to commence his experiments, listed hundreds of diseases. But the problem was that while all these new facts were being discovered knowledge was still too limited to make sense of them. Doctors could not, therefore, resist the temptation to speculate. Georg Ernst Stahl (1660-1734) 2 proposed that life is an activity of the soul (anima), disease coming because of the soul's misdirection. A condition was either tonic or plethoric, requiring bleeding or balsamic pills. Frederick Hoffman, a contemporary, considered the vital principle to be like ether which spread to the tissues via the nerves. Disease was alteration of the nature of the vital principle. Acute disease, being spasmodic, required sedation, chronic disease was atonic and needed stimulation. In France, Theophile de Borden came close to endocrinology

Marcello malpighi—A tribute

Marcello Malpighi was probably the best known member of the faculty at the Medical School of Bologna. He was an anatomist, physiologist, botanist, and an entomologist. It was not until his appearance that the real value of the microscope was appreciated. He studied the cmbryologic form of the kidney, and depicted in drawings how it was modified into the adult. He demonstrated the capillary arandastoinosis between the arteries and veins which was implicit in William Harvey's writings. He was a physician to Pope Innocent XII. Most historians call him one of the most charming personalities in the history of medicine.

Images and ideas: Leeuwenhoek's perception of the spermatozoa.

Henry Power, that optimistic devotee of the early microscope, warned in the I 660s that "our best Philosophers will but prove empty Conjecturalists, and their profoundest Speculations herein, but gloss'd outside Fallacies" if they did not exploit such new instruments.' He himself looked to the further confirmation and elucidation of the corpuscular natural philosophy,2 but in the following decades the most consequential revelations of the miscroscope might reasonably have been expected to pertain more specifically to biological generation. No other question in seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century science was more laden with philosophical and religious overtones, for it asked if and how a despiritualized, mechanistic nature could engender the purposeful complexity of living organisms, including man. As such exceptional observers as Marcello Malpighi, Jan Swammerdam, and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek probed various instances of generation with their microscopes, the community of the learned, the "Republic of Letters," waited for some decisive new testimony. For Leeuwenhoek, whose microscopes were the finest before the nineteenth century and whose persistence pushed early microscopy to its furthest limits, the generation of living things became an enduring preoccupation, and his observations and conclusions unsettled a recently recast consensus. However, these observations also revealed how little as yet though Leibniz, for one, was convinced otherwise3 the microscope could offer philosophy and how much, rather, it ultimately supported a resurgent skepticism. Probing the limits of what could then be observed in the minute mechanisms of living things, Leeuwenhoek's instruments seemed in the end to reaffirm that the fundamental processes of generation would remain unknown.

Early problems in professionalizing scientific research: Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712) and the Royal Society with an unpublished letter to Henry Oldenburg.

Nehemiah Grew’s The Anatomy of Plants (1682) was one of the most important botanical books published in the seventeenth century. In this compendium of his research, Grew combined an unprecedentedly detailed study of the structure of plants with an attempt to understand their functions. Working independently of, but in parallel with, his Italian contemporary, Marcello Malpighi, Grew justifiably saw himself as a pioneer in a new field, and between them these two scientists revolutionized biological knowledge. Grew ’s outstanding work has attracted various appraisals, the most detailed of them appearing in the pages of this journal, but no full scrutiny has ever been made of the role of the Royal Society in assisting these investigations. Not only did the Society arrange for the publication of Malpighi’s Anatome Plantarum in two parts in London in 1675 and 1679, in itself a tribute to the Society’s role in European science. In the case of Grew, its influence was even greater, for a decisive stimulus to the completion and publication of his work was provided by the Society’s offer of a research post to him in 1672, and by its continued support thereafter: Grew himself claimed that without the Society’s encouragement in the project, he ‘would scarcely have ventured upon it’. Indeed the 1672 episode has a wider significance, as one of the earliest cases of a scientific institution sponsoring a specific research project. The Royal Society had by then employed Robert Hooke for nearly a decade, during which he had published research of great importance: but the capacity in which he had been retained by the Society had been more that of a demonstrator, and other employees had been clerical or more menial in function. In France, of course, the state support provided when the Academie des Sciences was founded in 1666 assured a number of salaries for scientists: but the voluntary nature of the Royal Society imposed financial constraints which made such patronage far harder to organize.

Cotton Mather's Indebtedness to Marcello Malpighi

Journal Article Cotton Mather's Indebtedness to Marcello Malpighi Get access DOROTHY M. SCHULLIAN, DOROTHY M. SCHULLIAN Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar WINTON U. SOLBERG WINTON U. SOLBERG Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume XXXVI, Issue 3, July 1981, Pages 326–331, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/XXXVI.3.326 Published: 01 July 1981

Bologna and the Royal Society in the seventeenth century.

IN the years after 1660 the new experimental philosophy was introduced into the learned circles of Bologna in a self-conscious, deliberate and organized fashion. The city, politically a part of the Papal States, was at that time experiencing a slow but inexorable social and economic decline (1). Its old and famous university obviously suffered from the effects of this decline and no longer attracted large numbers of foreign students (2). A further check on cultural activity in the city was the control of the Inquisition, so cruel and relentless in the first half of the century as to render the city perfectly orthodox by 1660 (3). Yet there was detectable the influence of Galilean thought despite the unfavourable cultural and political environment of the city. This is particularly attributable to the activity of Cesare Marsili, friend and assiduous correspondent of Galileo (4), and of Bonaventura Cavalieri, an early follower of Galileo, who held the chair of mathematics and astronomy at the University of Bologna from 1629 to 1643 ($). (It is no accident that the first collected edition of Galileo’s works (admittedly incomplete) was published in Bologna in 1650). It was this tradition which, some years later, inspired Marcello Malpighi, Geminiano Montanari, and Giandomenico Cassini (among others) to attempt to disseminate in Bologna the aims, methods of work and organization of the Accademia del Cimento, with which all of these had been in close contact while living for longer or shorter periods in Tuscany, and of which they were corresponding members, and to try to emulate the aims and methods, as they saw them, of the Royal Society of London.

Studies in Pre-Vesalian Anatomy: Biography, Translations, Documents by L. R. Lind (review)

Among his contemporaries in anatomy were Bartholin, Bellini, Brunner, Cowper, de Graaf, Gall, Glisson, Highmore, Meibom, Nuck, Peyer, Riolan, Rivinus, Steno, Sylvius, TuIp, Wharton, Willis, Wirsung, and others whose names are still associated with parts of the human body. But Malpighi was greater than any of these. Adelmann's monumental work is the companion piece of his highly acclaimed Marcello Malpighi and the Evolution of Embryology (1966), also in five volumes. Historians of science have increasingly recognized the importance of the epistolary activities of scientists, especially when they are extensive and include both sides of a correspondence, in developing a deeper appreciation of the writers and their period. Malpighi's extant letters involve about 150 correspondents, many of whom were men of great distinction in their own right. The preface states that "a large mass of [his] documents important for the interpretation of the scientific milieu of the seventeenth century has been accessible in the original only to a few, and only with great difficulty, and even that part which has been published cannot be used to best advantage by students ofthe history of science." Now for the first time, all the 1,079 letters comprising the correspondence of this distinguished scientist have been collected into a single series of five volumes spread over the years 1658-1694. Each letter is in the original Latin, with minor emendations, and numbered serially. The editor's annotations are extensive and designed to increase the appreciation of a letter's significance. For those not acquainted with the original languages, there are brief English summaries, pithy yet instructive. There is indication of the repository of each letter, and, if previously published, the source and date is noted. Volume 5 contains an extensive list of titles cited, 166 pages in all, and the detailed index reads like a telephone directory of science, from Aesculapius to Zwinger. These volumes constitute a remarkable resource for scholars and, to sum it up in one word, "superb" can only reflect modest appraisal. Ronald Singer Department of Anatomy University of Chicago Studies in Pre-Vesalian Anatomy: Biography, Translations, Documents. By L. R. Lind. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1975. Pp. 34. $18.00. The 50 years prior to the publication of Andreas Vesalius' De Humant Corporis Fabrica (1543) was a momentous period of intellectual development when the scientific spirit was awakening and struggling for better expression. Amazing achievements were witnessed "not only in science but in art, literature, philosophy, exploration, political organization, imperialism, nationalism, and religion. The invention of printing less than fifty years before this period had enormously advanced the possibilities of thought and culture by way of printed books, including editions and translations of the Greek and Latin classics from which Italian Humanism drew the inspiration for its stimulating dialogue with antiquity" (from the introduction). Previous surveys of the 150 years before Vesalius, especially of the printed 296 I Book Reviews sketches of anatomy and some translations of texts, have drawn attention to the relatively slow progress, particularly in the fifteenth century. The reasons do not really lie in the difficulty of getting material for dissection or the opposition of the church. The real tether on anatomical science was the mental habit of the time. The burning desire for the analysis of nature at firsthand was not a dominating insistence. The effects of tradition and of education had to be overcome , and the gradual assimilation of new methods and new ideas was necessarily slow. As Locy stated [1], the retarding influence was generic rather than specific. Independent spirits of great originality were rare then, as now, and it seems natural that the habit of imitation should have so long perpetuated anatomical sketches of poor quality. Plagiarism was rife: publishers and authors engaged in it in a wholesale way. The ethics of the rights of intellectual property went unrecognized. The traditional anatomy, chiefly of Galen and his commentators , appeared in numerous guises under different authorship. With the establishment of a new method based on observation and reason, Vesalius (and da Vinci in the illustrative area) stood out as a beacon in the previous darkness and ushered in the era of independent observations. Professor Lind, Department of Classics, University of Kansas...

Renal microvasculatures and microenvironments.

The quotation from Marcello Malpighi with which Clifford Barger begins his discussion of The Renal Circulation in this issue of the Journal is in certain respects a commentary upon the difficulty of defining structural-functional correlations in the kidney. Despite his "long, patient and varied use of the microscope," Malpighi ended by believing that the glomerular arterioles connect directly with the tubular drainage manifold. The exquisite traceries of renal vessels pictured on page 487 clearly show the capillary nets that Malpighi failed to see in his own crude injections with ink and wine. They show, too, the "granularity" to which Malpighi . . .

Patterns of reversal in the heart of Ciona intestinalis L.

The reversal of the heart beat is not exclusive to tunicates, for Marcello Malpighi in 1660 described periodic reversal in Bombyx mori and in some Orthoptera. In 1821 Kuhl and van Hasselt reported the phenomenon in Ciona intestinalis L. We have observed reversal in many active pulsating blood vessels, both in vertebrates and in invertebrates, and even in embryonic heart tubes. Using four or five suction electrodes simultaneously, we were able to record electrical activity from multiple sites. Normally, the contraction wave originates from a localized site at one end of the tube and then traverses the whole length of the heart. When a wave of excitation does not propagate the full length, the blocked area may initiate a wave that then travels opposite to the initial direction (contrawave). This pattern, where activity arises in two separate areas such that the one contractile wave is orthograde and the other retrograde, may persist for a prolonged period. Each different pattern seems to result from some disturbance of the normal pacemaker in the myoepithelial cells.

On the discovery of the "rete Malpighi" in tongue and skin.

On the discovery of the "rete Malpighi" in tongue and skin.

The brain "glands" of Malpighi elucidated by practical history.

The brain "glands" of Malpighi elucidated by practical history.

Marcello Malpighi, Physician and Scientist

A triumph of American scholarship, this massive study 1 of Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694) represents an achievement truly stupendous. Actually the work comprises several monographs held together by inner logic. The central core is the embryological discoveries of Malpighi, but to make the analysis meaningful, Adelmann has constructed a vast framework. Realizing that no work can be understood apart from its environment, the author placed Malpighi in a historical context of tremendous scope and thereby contributes profoundly to our understanding of the 17th century. Since Adelmann wants the reader to have direct acquaintance with the first-hand records, he aimed to make these records accessible and comprehensible. He presents the sources to provide not only illumination at the focus but also a diffusion of light from it in all directions. To achieve his goal Adelmann has combed virtually every record which bears on the life of Malpighi— his published works and those of

Marcello malpighi and the evolution of embryology. By Howard B. Adelmann. 5 volumes, 24 × 32½ cm. XXIV + 1475 pages, illustrated. $200.00. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York. 1966

The Anatomical RecordVolume 156, Issue 1 p. 119-121 Book Marcello malpighi and the evolution of embryology. By Howard B. Adelmann. 5 volumes, 24 × 32½ cm. XXIV + 1475 pages, illustrated. $200.00. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York. 1966 Charles Mayo, Charles MayoSearch for more papers by this author Charles Mayo, Charles MayoSearch for more papers by this author First published: September 1966 https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.1091560114AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume156, Issue1September 1966Pages 119-121 RelatedInformation

“Marcello Malpighi Biologist” at Cornell

Journal Article “Marcello Malpighi Biologist” at Cornell Get access Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume XXI, Issue 4, October 1966, Pages 417-a–417, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/XXI.4.417-a Published: 01 October 1966

The “Raid” on Malpighi's Villa a Fiction

The “Raid” on Malpighi's Villa a Fiction

Marcello Malpighi, Embryologist

Journal Article Marcello Malpighi, Embryologist Get access Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume XIII, Issue 1, January 1958, Pages 97-a–97, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/XIII.1.97-a Published: 01 January 1958

Marcello Malpighi, 1628–94

International Journal of Clinical PracticeVolume 9, Issue 7 p. 468-471 Annotations Marcello Malpighi, 1628–94 Hilary Elgin, Hilary ElginSearch for more papers by this author Hilary Elgin, Hilary ElginSearch for more papers by this author First published: 01 July 1955 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1742-1241.1955.tb02190.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume9, Issue7July 1955Pages 468-471 RelatedInformation

Comparative physiology of the kidney.

We cannot properly speak of physiology, and therefore we cannot speak of comparative physiology, until the time of Harvey. But it is worthy of emphasis that the discoverer of the circulation utilized the comparative method as extensively as any man since his time. It is something of a paradox that Harvey, in observations on the circulation of the blood, failed to challenge the Galenic view on how the blood got from the arteries to the veins but was content to believe that it seeped through the soft organs simply as water seeps through sand. CONTRIBUTIONS OF MALPIGHI The microscope, as improved by Galileo, was available in Harvey's time, but either because of lack of acquaintance with the instrument or lack of interest in the finer structure of the body, he failed to use it. It was Galileo's compatriot, Marcello Malpighi, who introduced this instrument into the study of the structure

Tercentenary of Nehemiah Grew (1641—1712)

NEREMIAH GREW will always be held in honour by botanists as the co-founder with Marcello Malpighi of the science of plant anatomy. It is true that in his ideas about plant cells he did not advance much beyond Robert Hooke, who, in 1665, figured and named these units; but, as regards knowledge of vascular structure, the position is very different. Grew and Malpighi not only initiated the study of the bundle system of the flowering plant, but also carried it to a surprisingly high level, considering, that they had to start from the very foundations. Grew's first book, “The Anatomy of Vegetables Begun” (1672), contains the earliest printed illustration showing vascular bundles as seen in section under the microscope. He followed up this work in 1673 and 1675 by treatises on the detailed anatomy of roots and of stems. Finally he brought all his results together, in 1682, in a splendidly illustrated folio, “The Anatomy of Plants”, which included improved second editions of his first three books, as well as much additional matter. The excellence of Grew's botanical morphology and anatomy has been recognized fully; indeed his reputation in this line is deservedly so great that it has tended to overshadow the other facets of his output. It seems worth while, therefore, in this, his tercentenary year, to direct attention to certain less specialized aspects of his scientific work. Grew's general attitude towards biology cannot be understood unless one realizes how deeply he was committed to a mechanistic view of the universe. It seems likely that Hooke, and also Descartes, had to some extent turned his mind in this direction, though in the seventeenth century such ideas were so much in the air that it is scarcely necessary to look for specific sources. It was owing to the mechanistic viewpoint of that period, that the microscope, for example, was hailed as an instrument which was destined to clear away all inconvenient mysteries. Hooke hoped that by the help of glasses “we may perhaps be inabled to discern all the secret workings of Nature, almost in the same manner as we do those that are the productions of Art, and are manag'd by Wheels and Engines, and Springs, that were devised by humane Wit”. Grew enlarges upon this analogy between the world and a man-made machine, and seems to find it entirely satisfying. He says that “all Nature is as one Great Engine made by and held in” the hand of God. He regards this engine as having been set in motion by the Great First Cause, to which all subsequent effects can be traced back; he considers that the original causation was all that was necessary, and that, in the normal course of events, no subsequent interference has occurred. “And as it is the watchmaker's Art,” he says, “that the Hand moves regularly from hour to hour, although he put not his finger still to it: so it is the demonstration of Divine Wisdom, that the Parts of Nature are so harmoniously contrived and set together as to conspire to all kind of natural motions and effects without the extraordinary-immediate influence of the Author of it.”

Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Society

AFTER reference, according to “pious custom”, to the work of the two foreign members and fourteen fellows of the Royal Society who died during the past twelve months, Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, in his anniversary meeting address on November 30 as president of the Society, made a plea for the establishment of chairs in the history of science. Individual scientific achievement is stored in fewer memories than is great literature, partly because it is but a step in the progress of knowledge. The perspective of history is specially valuable in maintaining sound judgments in these days of revolutionary views. Christopher Wren provides an example of a man whose services for experimental science have been overshadowed, except for the few, by other achievements. The tercentenary of his birth occurred during the past year, and also that of Antony van Leeuwenhoek and of Marcello Malpighi, both of whom were also associated with the Royal Society during its early years. The number of tercentenaries of original and early fellows of the Society falling during a small span of years makes it impossible to organise a public celebration of each such event.