Historical and Commemorative
Medals
Collection of Benjamin Weiss
GEORGIO BAGLIVI AND MARCELLO
MALPIGHI ST URBAIN, Ferdinand de: Italy, ca.1704, Bronze, 40 mm Giorgio Baglivi (1668-1707), an illustrious physician, studied at Padua and
Bologna. He then went to Rome where Malpighi became his teacher and friend.
He was appointed professor of anatomy at the College of La Sapienza where
his lectures brought such fame that in 1698 he was elected as a Fellow of
the Royal Society of London. He is best known as an iatrophysicist (a school
of medical thought in the 17th century which explained all physiologic and
pathologic phenomena by the laws of physics), although he fought against the
domination of theory over practice. Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694) was an Italian physician
and anatomist. Malpighi entered the University at Bologna, graduating in
medicine and philosophy. Later he worked at the University of Piza, then at
Messina and later returned to Bologna. In 1691 he accepted the invitation of
Pope Innocent XII to come to Rome as his personal physician. Malpighi was
the first to apply the newly invented microscope to anatomical research and
has been described as a founder of comparative physiology and microscopic
anatomy. He also was a pioneer in the science of embryology. His first great
observation was the capillary circulation of blood, thus expanding on
William Harvey’s theory on how blood circulated in the body. By
demonstrating the existence of capillaries, he provided evidence for the
link between arteries and veins that had eluded Harvey. He went on to
investigate the anatomy of plants and made important discoveries in this
area as well. Many microscopic anatomical structures are named after him,
including a skin layer (Malpighi layer) and two different Malpighian
corpuscles in the kidneys and the spleen, as well as the Malpighian tubules
in the excretory system of insects. (Taken, in part, from Freeman) The obverse of this medal was issued on occasion of the
publication of Baglivi's Opera Onmia Medico-Practica, first published
in Leyden in 1704.
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