Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 570

MARCELLO MALPIGHI (1628-1694) Epistolae anatomicae. Apud Casparum Commelinum 1669 [4] 260 pp., 5 fold. plates. 13.3 cm.

For more information on this author or work, see number: 569

Fracassati, Malpighi's close friend, confidant, and colleague at Bologna, was responsible for assembling these letters for publication. The work contains four letters of Malpighi and two of Fracassati on the brain, tongue, adipose tissues, and skin. The five folding plates illustrate Malpighi's microscopic investigations of the brain and tongue. Malpighi's name is celebrated in several eponymous anatomical structures in the kidney, spleen, skin, and lungs. It is in the epistle on the tongue that he described the mucosal layer beneath the epidermis which is now called the Malpighian layer. In "De omento, pinguedine, et adiposis ductibus," Malpighi reported his observation of the red blood corpuscles. Unfortunately he mistook them for globules of fat passing into the blood and it wasn't until 1674 that Leeuwenhoek (see No. 590 ff.) gave the first accurate description of the erythrocytes.

See Related Record(s): 590

Cited references: Cushing M102a; Waller 6206; Wellcome III, p. 50

Gift of John Martin, M.D.