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The strength of Meli's work lies in his attention to detail in highly complex Latin works, and in his sensitivity to unpublished work, correspondence, diaries, and above all, to the technologies of illustration.
Distinguished as this work was, in Mechanism, Experiment, Disease Domenico Bertoloni Meli maintains there is a great deal more to Marcello Malpighi. In this new book—part biography, part intellectual history of anatomy (the philosophy and mechanics of the body), and part history of medicine in the 17th century—Bertoloni Meli tells readers why. What he does wonderfully is to locate Malpighi as a practicing physician during Italy's scientific revolution. Bertoloni Meli conveys the excitement of the new science, voices the tumult that ensued as opposing schools of thought clashed, and reminds readers that priority disputes are nothing new.
Bertoloni Meli makes great use of Malpighi's wonderful epistolary consultations to remind readers that boundaries between research and practice have been drawn too sharply by historians. His use of overlooked medical correspondence increases the presence of Malpighi, the medical practitioner, working from bench to bedside four centuries before translational research hit the headlines.
The most comprehensive account to date of the works of Marcello Malpighi.
Bertoloni Meli's book is a very valuable and welcome contribution to the ongoing reassessment of the Scientific Revolution as a manifold process that involved all areas of natural knowledge—from physics to medicine—and reconfigured each and their mutual relations.
Among the many lessons to be taken from Domenico Bertoloni Meli's carefully researched, persuasive and, at times, beautifully rendered book is that the life sciences in the early modern period must be studied with an eye to the history of science, medicine and philosophy... There is too much to praise and to learn from Meli's book to do it justice in a short review such as this. For several years now his work has represented a vital and inspiring force in the history medicine, and Mechanism, Experiment, Disease: Marcello Malpighi and Seventeenth-Century Anatomy in particular will enliven the study of early modern medicine in ways we cannot pretend to anticipate. But one thing we are confident about is that Meli's latest book should shape the new work to be done on eighteenth-century notions of mechanism, the emergence of pathology, and the history of visualization and its practices.
About
Book Details
Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6.125
x 9.25
Pages
456
ISBN
9780801899041
Illustration Description
108 halftones
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Anatomy, Medicine, and the New Philosophy
1. Anatomical Research in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century
2. Malpighi's Role on the Anatomical Stage
3. Medical Locations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Anatomy, Medicine, and the New Philosophy
1. Anatomical Research in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century
2. Malpighi's Role on the Anatomical Stage
3. Medical Locations: The Sites of Malpighi's Work
4. Mechanism and Mechanics
5. Experiment and Collaboration
6. Disease and Anatomy
7. Structure and Organization
Part I: The Rise of Mechanistic and Microscopic Anatomy: Malpighi's Formation and Association with Borelli
1. The New Anatomy, the Lungs, and Respiration
1.1. Changing Anatomical Horizons
1.2. Malpighi's Bologna Apprenticeship: Anatomical Venues and Vivisection
1.3. Malpighi's Pisa Apprenticeship: Microscopy and the New Philosophy
1.4. Malpighi's Epistolae on the Lungs
1.5. The Purpose of Respiration: Thruston, Lower, and Hooke
2. Epidemic Fevers and the Challenge to Galenism
2.1. Galenic Traditions and New Medical Thinking
2.2. Borelli and the Sicilian Epidemics of 1647–48
2.3. Borelli, Malpighi, and the Pisa Epidemics of 1661
2.4. The 1665 Controversy between the Neoterics and the Galenists
2.5. Malpighi's Risposta to Galenistarum triumphus
3. The Anatomy of the Brain and of the Sensory Organs
3.1. Atomism and the Anatomy of the Senses
3.2. Brain Research in the 1660s: Willis, Steno, and Malpighi
3.3. Malpighi's Anatomical Findings on Taste and Touch
3.4. Fracassati's Far-Reaching Investigations
3.5. Bellini and Rossetti: Atomistic Anatomy of Taste and Touch
Part II: Secretion and the Mechanical Organization of the Body: Glands as the Centerpiece of Malpighi's Investigations
4. The Glandular Structure of the Viscera
4.1. The Revival of Glands
4.2. Changing Perceptions on Glands: Glisson, Wharton, and Steno
4.3. Malpighi's Treatise on the Liver
4.4. The Brain and the Cerebral Cortex
4.5. The Kidneys: Bellini and Malpighi
4.6. The Spleen and Its Problems
5. Fat, Blood, and the Body's Organization
5.1. The Necessity of Matter and the Animal's Benefit
5.2. Descartes on Fat, Blood, and Nutrition
5.3. Malpighi on Fat and Its Philosophical Implications
5.4. Blood Transfusions
5.5. Malpighi on Heart Polyps and the Nature of Blood
6. The Structure of Glands and the Problem of Secretion
6.1. Different Perspectives on Glands
6.2. Intestinal Glands and Their Implications
6.3. The Mode of Operation of Glands
6.4. Glands in the Theatre: Bellini, Sbaraglia, and Malpighi
6.5. Nuck's New Taxonomy of Glands
Part III: Between Anatomy and Natural History: Malpighi andthe Royal Society
7. The Challenge of Insects
7.1. Changing Perceptions on Insects
7.2. Redi: Experiments and Generation
7.3. Malpighi: Historia and Anatomy
7.4. Swammerdam: Metamorphosis and Classification
7.5. Swammerdam and Malpighi: Microstructure and Iconography
8. Generation and the Formation of the Chick in the Egg
8.1. Generation and Its Problems
8.2. Harvey: Epigenesis and the Role of the Faculties
8.3. The Organs of Generation and the Problem of Fecundation
8.4. Swammerdam and the Amsterdam Circle on Preformation
8.5. Malpighi and the Formation of the Chick in the Egg
9. The Anatomy of Plants
9.1. Plants between Anatomy and Natural History
9.2. Malpighi's Anatomy of Plants: Structure, Iconography, and Experiment
9.3. Trionfetti, Malpighi, Cestoni, and the Vegetation of Plants
9.4. Grew and Camerarius: Iconography, "OEconomy," and SexualReproduction
Part IV: Anatomy, Pathology, and Therapy: Malpighi's Posthumous Writings
10. The Fortunes of Malpighi's Mechanistic Anatomy
10.1. Mechanistic Anatomy and Malpighi's Vita
10.2. Writing about the Self
10.3. Levels of Mechanical Explanation in Borelli and Malpighi
10.4. Paolo Mini and the Soul-Body Problem
10.5. Ruysch's Challenge and Boerhaave
11. From the New Anatomy to Pathology and Therapy
11.1. A Bologna Controversy and Its Wider Implications
11.2. Sbaraglia's Challenge to Malpighi's Research
11.3. Malpighi: The Medical Signifi cance of the New Anatomy
11.4. Sbaraglia's Empiricism and Methodological Concerns
11.5. Young Morgagni's Covert Intervention
12. Medical Consultations
12.1. Between Theory and Practice, Carnival and Lent
12.2. Publishing Malpighi's Consultations
12.3. Structure and Contents of Malpighi's Consultations
12.4. Curing with the Pen: Francesco Redi
12.5. A Broader Look at Medical Consultations: Vallisneri and Morgagni
Epilogue
List of Abbreviations
Notes
References
Index
Resources
