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Mechanistic Pathology and Therapy in the Medical Assayer of Marcello Malpighi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2012

Domenico Bertoloni Meli
Domenico Bertoloni Meli
Affiliation:
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405–2401, USA; e-mail: [email protected]
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Information
Medical History , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , 01 April 2007 , pp. 165 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2007. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1 G B Morgagni, Opera postuma, Rome, Istituto di Storia della Medicina dell'Università di Roma, 1964, vol. 1, pp. 15–16.

2 A Wear, ‘Medical practice in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England: continuity and union’, in R French and A Wear (eds), The medical revolution of the seventeenth century, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 293–320; T M Brown, ‘The College of Physicians and the acceptance of iatromechanism in England, 1665–1695’, Bull. Hist. Med., 1970, 44: 12–30; idem, ‘Physiology and the mechanical philosophy in mid-seventeenth century England’, Bull. Hist. Med., 1977, 51: 25–54; Luigi Belloni provides useful background information in the introduction to M Malpighi, Opere scelte, Turin, UTET, 1967 (hereafter MOB); H J Cook, ‘Physicians and the new philosophy: Henry Stubbe and the virtuosi-physicians’, in French and Wear (eds), pp. 246–71; B B Kaplan, ‘Divulging of useful truths in physick’: the medical agenda of Robert Boyle, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1993; M Hunter, ‘Boyle versus the Galenists: a suppressed critique of seventeenth-century medical practice and its significance’, Med. Hist., 1997, 41: 322–61; L Shapiro, ‘The health of the body-machine? Or seventeenth century mechanism and the concept of health’, Perspectives on Science, 2003, 11: 421–42; G Armillei, Consulti medici di vari professori spiegati con le migliori dottrine moderne, e co' le regole più esatte della scienza meccanica, Venice, Giuseppe Corona, 1743–5, contains several consultations by Malpighi and other mechanistic anatomists; D Bertoloni Meli, ‘Francesco Redi e Marcello Malpighi: ricerca anatomica e pratica medica’, in W Bernardi and L Guerrini (eds), Francesco Redi: un protagonista della scienza moderna, Florence, Olschki, 1999, pp. 73–86; D Bertoloni Meli, ‘The archivi and consulti of Marcello Malpighi: some preliminary reflections’, in M Hunter (ed.), Archives of the scientific revolution, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1998, pp. 109–20.

3 The literature on this topic is vast. A useful collection of essays is in P Dear (ed.), The literary structure of scientific argument, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. See also L Daston, ‘Baconian facts, academic civility, and the prehistory of objectivity’, Annals of Scholarship, 1991, 8: 337–63; D Rutkin, ‘Celestial offerings: astrological motifs in the dedicatory letters of Kepler's Astronomia nova and Galileo's Sidereus nuncius’, in W R Newman and A Grafton (eds), Secrets of nature: astrology and alchemy in early modern Europe, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2001, pp. 133–72. S Shapin, A social history of truth: civility and science in seventeenth-century England, University of Chicago Press, 1994; M Ben-Chaim, ‘Doctrine and use: Newton's “Gift of Preaching”’, Hist. Sci., 1998, 36: 269–98.

4 D Bertoloni Meli, ‘The new anatomy of Marcello Malpighi’, and ‘The posthumous dispute between Borelli and Malpighi’, in D Bertoloni Meli (ed.), Marcello Malpighi: anatomist and physician, Florence, Olschki, 1997 (hereafter MAP), pp. 21–62, and 247–75.

5 The correspondence of Marcello Malpighi, ed. H B Adelmann, 5 vols, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1975 (hereafter MCA), vol. 1, pp. 21–3, Borelli to Malpighi, 7 Nov. 1659. H B Adelmann, Marcello Malpighi and the evolution of embryology, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1966 (hereafter Adelmann), vol. 1, pp. 155–7, 166–7. D Bertoloni Meli, ‘The new anatomy of Marcello Malpighi’, op. cit., note 4 above. On the social status and training of surgeons in Italy at the time, see D Gentilcore, ‘The organization of medical practice in Malpighi's Italy’, in MAP, pp. 75–110, on pp. 95–101.

6 MCA, vol. 1, pp. 286–8, Borelli to Malpighi, 4 Nov. 1665, on p. 287. See also MCA, vol. 1, p. 302, Borelli to Malpighi, 13 Feb. 1666; M Malpighi, Opera posthuma, Venice, ex Typographia Andreae Poleti, 1698, Risposta to Lipari, pp. 135–6; E Zinato, Il vero in maschera: Dialogismi galileiani, Naples, Liguori, 2003, p. 59; M Piccolino, Lo zufolo e la cicala, Turin, Bollati-Boringhieri, 2005, p. 141.

7 G Galilei, Opere, Florence, Barbera, 1890–1909, 20 vols in 21, ed. A Favaro (hereafter GOF), vol. 6, p. 349. Galileo talks also briefly of hearing, and merely mentions colours, leaving out sight. See also MOB, p. 141.

8 GOF, vol. 6, p. 349. I have amended the translation by S Drake and C D O'Malley in The controversy on the comets of 1618, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960, pp. 310–1, which contains some inaccuracies.

9 MOB, pp. 181, 141. Plato, Timaeus, 61C–69A. In his edition of Plato's cosmology, New York, Humanities Press, 1937, Liberal Arts Press, 1957, pp. 260–1, F M Cornford points to a distinction drawn by Theophrastus between Democritus and Plato concerning the reality of sensations. At pp. 261–2 Cornford points to an inconsistency between Timaeus and Theaetetus. P Redondi, Galileo heretic (Princeton University Press, 1987, transl. Raymond Rosenthal), pp. 51–67; S Gómez López, Le passioni degli atomi. Montanari e Rossetti: una polemica tra galileiani, Florence, Olschki, 1997; idem, ‘Marcello Malpighi and atomism’, in MAP, pp. 175–89; M Bucciantini and M Torrini (eds), Geometria e atomismo nella scuola galileiana, Florence, Olschki, 1992; P Rossi, ‘I punti di Zenone: una preistoria vichiana’, Nuncius, 1988, 13 (2): 377–425, on pp. 382, 405–9, 417–20.

10 MCA, vol. 1, pp. 305–7, Capucci to Malpighi, Crotone, 4 April 1666, on p. 306.

11 See, for example, Daston, op. cit., note 3 above. Shapin, op. cit., note 3 above.

12 MCA, vol. 5, p. 1916, Malpighi to Waller, 6 Nov. 1693; MOB, p. 499; G G Sbaraglia, Oculorum et mentis vigiliae, Bologna, typis Petri Mariae Monti, 1704, pp. 1–2.

13 See D Bertoloni Meli, ‘The posthumous dispute’, op. cit., note 4 above.

14 Zinato, op. cit., note 6 above, p. 50n9; Adelmann, vol. 1, p. 168; MOB, pp. 582–3, 596–602; on pp. 14–15 Belloni attributes the source of Malpighi's approach to Marco Aurelio Severino.

15 Adelmann, vol. 1, pp. 556–7.

16 M Cavazza, ‘The uselessness of anatomy: Mini and Sbaraglia versus Malpighi’, in MAP, pp. 129–45; A Marzolla, ‘Alcune note su uno scritto apologetico di Marcello Malpighi’, Annali delle Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia, 1990, 20: 169–84; MOB, p. 493.

17 MOB, pp. 497–8. A paraphrase is in Adelmann, vol. 1, pp. 565–6; see also pp. 617–18. Malpighi was still composing it in 1693, MCA, vol. 5, p. 1916, Malpighi to Waller, 6 Nov. 1693.

18 GOF, vol. 6, pp. 213–14; The controversy of the comets of 1618, op. cit., note 8 above, pp. 163–4.

19 D Freedberg, The eye of the Lynx: Galileo, his friends, and the beginnings of modern natural history, University of Chicago Press, 2002, pp. 57–8, 74–5, 140–7.

20 On Galileo's Assayer, see A Battistini, Galileo e i Gesuiti, Milan, Vita e pensiero, 2000, pp. 134–64; Piccolino, op. cit., note 6 above, pp. 141, 151, 158.

21 GOF, vol. 6, p. 372.

22 A brief account of the dispute is in A Zeno, ‘Relazione della Controversia’, Giornale de' Letterati d'Italia, 1710, 4: 263–292. See also C Pighetti, ‘Un dialogo di Domenico Guglielmini restituito alla critica da Giambattista Morgagni’, in V Cappelletti and F di Trocchio (eds), De sedibus et causis. Morgagni nel centenario, Rome, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1986, pp. 125–33; A Dini, ‘La difesa della “medicina razionale” e il giovane Morgagni’, in ibid., pp. 147–54. Malpighi had followed the Assayer in style and contents in his reply to Lipari too; Zinato, op. cit., note 6 above, pp. 45–64.

23 Galen, Opera, Kühn, vol. 5, pp. 667–71; MOB, p. 615; G Giglioni, ‘The machines of the body and the operations of the soul in Marcello Malpighi's anatomy’, in MAP, pp. 149–74. M L Altieri Biagi and B Basile (eds), Scienziati del Seicento, Milano-Napoli, Ricciardi, 1980, p. 1169, identifies Galileo's distinction between primary and secondary qualities as Malpighi's source. Adelmann, vol. 1, p. 585, does not report or comment on this passage. Surprisingly, Belloni too did not identify Galileo's Assayer as Malpighi's source for the structure and style of the Risposta to Sbaraglia.

24 Galen referred to the atomistic doctrine of primary and secondary qualities in De elementis ex Hippocrate, I, 2, in Galen, Opera, Kühn, vol. 1, pp. 417–18. Malpighi may have had a source derived from Boyle in mind here; see A defence of the doctrine touching the spring and weight of the air, in Robert Boyle, Works, ed. M Hunter and E B Davis, 14 vols, London, and Brookfield, VT, Pickering & Chatto, 1999–2000, vol. 3, p. 84. According to O Gal, Meanest foundations and nobler superstructures, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 2002, p. 127, the relevant passage was due to Hooke.

25 MOB, pp. 508, 512, 549, 556, 589. The role of Cartesian themes and images in Malpighi's Risposta would deserve a special study. P Galluzzi, ‘G.A. Borelli dal Cimento agli Investiganti’, in F Lomonaco and M Torrini (eds), Galileo e Napoli, Napoli, Guida, 1987, pp. 339–55, on p. 341–2; F Duchesneau, Les modèles du vivant de Descartes à Leibniz, Paris, Vrin, 1998, p. 202.

26 Different but in my view not entirely incompatible views on the parable have been put forward by M Biagioli, and by M H Shank, Early Science and Medicine, 1996, 1: 87–92, and 141–5.

27 Bertoloni Meli, ‘Posthumous dispute’, MAP, p. 260.

28 MOB, pp. 512, 514; Galluzzi, op. cit., note 25 above.

29 GOF, vol. 6, p. 232, par. 6 of the Assayer; MOB, p. 528. See also R J J Martin, ‘Explaining John Freind's History of Physick’, Stud. Hist. Philos. Sci., 1988, 19: 399–418.

30 MOB, p. 536; Malpighi provides a definition of indicationes, a hallmark of rational medicine in ibid, p. 564. Galen, On the therapeutic method. Books I and II, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991, pp. 63–4, and the commentary by R J Hankinson, pp. 202–6. Wear, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 305; F Kudlien and R J Durling (eds), Galen's method of healing, Brill, Leiden, 1991, deals extensively with the history and significance of this term from Galen to the Renaissance, see in particular the excellent J J Bylebyl paper, ‘Teaching Methodus medendi in the Renaissance’, pp. 157–89, especially pp. 174–88.

31 Malpighi's De renibus was published as part of De viscerum structura, Bologna, ex typographia Jacobi Montii, 1666. On this work, see D Bertoloni Meli, ‘Blood, monsters, and necessity in Malpighi's De polypo cordis’, Med. Hist., 2001, 45: 511–22. Wear, op. cit., note 2 above, p. 300; MOB, p. 546.

32 Sbaraglia, op. cit., note 12 above, second part, pp. 254, 257, 560; Cavazza, op. cit., note 16 above, pp. 143–5; MOB, p. 590.

33 MOB, pp. 560, 562–3, 565–6. For the reference to Macbeth's witches, see Piccolino, op. cit., note 6 above, p. 159. Compare the usage of milk for curing fevers, discussed in Bertoloni Meli, ‘The new anatomy’, MAP, pp. 34–5. MCA, vol. 1, pp. 336–41, Capucci to Malpighi, 21 Jan. 1667, on pp. 337–8 and nn.17–18. See also D Bertoloni Meli, ‘Francesco Redi e Marcello Malpighi’, op. cit., note 2 above.

34 Sbaraglia, op. cit., note 12 above, second part, pp. 615ff. The Assayer was included in the 1655 Bologna and 1718 Florence editions of Galileo's works. Cavazza, op. cit., note 16 above, p.129; A M Vidal, J P Tomás, ‘In tenebris adhuc versantes: la respuesta de los novatores españoles a la invectiva de Pierre Régis’, Dynamis, 1995, 15: 301–40; M Cavazza, Settecento inquieto, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1990, pp. 101–4 and ch. 5.

35 Bernardi and Guerrini (eds), op. cit., note 2 above. In addition to the correspondence in MCA, several letters between Redi and Malpighi are published in D Bertoloni Meli, ‘Additions to the correspondence of Marcello Malpighi’, MAP, pp. 279–312.

36 Relevant material can be found in Lomonaco and Torrini (eds), op. cit., note 25 above; V Ferrone, Scienza natura religione: mondo newtoniano e cultura italiana nel primo Settecento, Napoli, Jovene, 1982, pp. 3–11; Ferrone's book offers an intellectual profile of the Italian scene in the eighteenth century. M Torrini, Dopo Galileo. Una polemica scientifica, 1684–1711, Florence, Olschki, 1979, p. 28.

37 See the letters published by C Dollo, ‘Inediti per l'epistolario malpighiano’, Rivista di Storia della Filosofia, 1984, 3: 537–50. Malpighi's letter is dated from Rome, 7 Feb. 1693.