Marcello Malpighi

Marcello Malpighi (* March 10th 1628 with Crevalcore, in the surroundings of Bologna; † November 29th 1694 with Rome) is the father of the microscopic anatomy or Histologie. Its name is attached today to tens of structures in the human body and in the insects.

Malpighi is born the year even where William Harvey publishes her discoveries on blood circulation. Harvey will remain all its life the model that this one will seek to reach. After studies at the university of Bologna, he becomes full professor of the theoretical pulpit of medicine to Pisa in 1656. There will remain there only three years, its precarious health pushing it to return to Bologna among his.
the March 4th 1669, Malpighi becomes member of the Royal Society of London. After being become doctor of the Innocent Pope XII in 1691, it dies of Apoplexie the November 29th 1694 with Rome.

Physiology

Work of Harvey, if they were revolutionists, remained incomplete. If Harvey had included/understood the general mechanism of blood circulation, it had not been able to find how the Sang passed from the arteries to the veins. By using the Microscope and by centering its research on the Lung, Malpighi discovers the capillary in 1661, which it describes in pulmonibus observationes anatomicae (anatomical observations of the lung), thus buckling the system of Harvey. This book is regarded as the work founder of modern medicine. In addition to its discoveries, Malpighi will imagine the standard diagram of the scientific articles as used today. It will describe in particular its experimental methods so that the other doctors can check and confirm (or cancel) its discoveries. This possibility of criticism is one of the pillars of modern science.

This work, against the dogma galenic will attract to him the hostility of the scientific community of the time. It will be obliged to exile with Messine in Sicily in 1662. There, it will describe structures varied such as the structure of the brain, the red globules, the Peau, the Rein S and of many other structures still attached today to its name. It will also approach the Entomologie and the Embryologie. In embryology, in particular, it is at the origin of the Théorie of the preformation which stated that the Ovule contained in entirety the living being in miniature.

Botany

Malpighi makes appear in 1671 a work entitled Anatome plantarum on the cellular anatomy of the vegetable . It shows that the cellular fabric consists of blisters of variable form which it names utricules. By comparing fabrics of various plants, he sees that the utricules are welded between them by a substance which he names cystoblastème. Despite everything, the illustrations of Malpighi are often difficult to interpret.

He also studies the embryology of the plants. Although its observations are very thorough, it is manifest that it has yet only one rather vague idea of the sex of the plants. Malpighi describes finally the bud like a structure containing all the elements of the future sheet, flower or connects.

This work makes of Malpighi the father of the vegetable Anatomie.

Carl von Linné (1707-1778) dedicated to him the kind Malpighia , type of the family of the Malpighiacée S and about the Malpighiales, introduced by the phylogenetic Classification.

Appendices

Bibliographical orientation

Matthew Cobb (2002). Malpighi, Swammerdam and the Colourful Silkworm: Replication and Visual Representation in Early Modern Science, Annals off Science , 59 : 111-147.

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