Continuing with the stories of those who had a great influence on Lionardo DiCapua’s life and work, I present the Father of Histology and Embryology, Marcello Malpighi.
One of the most brilliant scientists in all of Europe in the seventeenth century was Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, who had at times participated in the meetings of the Accademia degli Investiganti founded by DiCapua and his friend Tommaso Cornelio in 1663. Physicist-mathematician-astronomer-physician Borelli was gifted with the passion of an irascible Neapolitan along with a brilliant and far-reaching mind. His work on the motion of planets and the mathematics involved in their attraction was the stuff that George Halley built upon to describe his famous, recurrent comet. In medicine, Borelli became the founder of “Iatrophysics”, which applied the mechanistic principles of physics to the functions of the human body – the movement of the limbs, the circulation of the blood, the beating of the heart.
While a professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa, Borelli had met Marcello Malpighi, the young professor of the newly appointed section on theoretical medicine. The anecdotal story of their meeting may have been fabricated, but it speaks to their common intellectual instincts. It is said that during his first lecture, Malpighi stressed his open approach to medicine, which caused such animosity in the audience that one-by-one the students got up and left the room. When he finished, the only person remaining was Borelli.
Malpighi was twenty years younger than Borelli and possessed a more agreeable personality. The two men became colleagues in experiments as well as good friends. Each helped the other attain to new heights in their fields. Malpighi helped focus Borelli’s wandering interests on the importance of biology. Borelli taught his younger friend the physics of Galileo. He also encouraged him to leave theoretical medicine for the blossoming world of experimentation.
Following that suggestion, Malpighi began using his microscope to study the comparative anatomy of humans, lower animals, and insects with great success. The complete list of his discoveries justifies his titles as the Father of Histology and Father of Embryology. Some of his findings include the cortical cells of the brain and their connection with nerve fibers, identification of the organ of touch and the pigmented layer (the Malpighian layer) within the skin and the complete development of the chick embryo. His greatest effort led to the completion of Harvey’s theory about the circulation of blood.
Marcello observed sections of a frog’s lung under his microscope and became the first to identify the bridging capillaries. These “Malpighian Tubules” were the missing minute connections between the arterial and venous systems that Harvey had postulated but never found. Galen and even Vesalius had incorrectly proposed unseen passages between the chambers of the heart as the means by which the blood went from one side to the other. Malpighi’s capillaries had finally and indisputably completed the circulatory loop. His innovative work earned him the respect of his contemporaries and was published among the first “Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society” in London.
At Cornelio’s invitation, Marcello traveled to Naples and presented to the Investiganti noting afterwards: “I met with the learned Cornelio and Lionardo and others of that school and talked and consulted with them as long as I was able, to the great recreation of my mind.”
Thank you for reading. Please follow my posts and comment. For more information about Lionardo DiCapua, his life and times, you can purchase my book: From Superstition to Science: Lionardo DiCapua and the Uncertainty of Medicine.
