The Scientific Revolution

Lesson 7: The life sciences in the later seventeenth century

Anatomy and physiology after Harvey

The seventeenth century saw an explosion of anatomical study, no longer concentrated in Italy but spread throughout Europe. New techniques, like microscopy and the injection of colored wax to trace the different passages of the body were applied to anatomical investigation.

The innovations of this period can be evaluated simply by noticing how many names for body parts commemorate seventeenth-century scientists. Gaspare Aselli (1581-1625), a professor at Pavia, discovered the chyliferous vessels of the intestines and had the “pancreas of Aselli” named after him.

The Danish geologist and antaomist Nicholas Steno discovered the duct of the parotid gland, “Steno’s duct,” and the English physician and dissector Edward Tyson (1651-1708) the mucilaginous glands of the human penis, “Tyson’s glands.”

The “circlet of Willis,” arteries at the base of the brain, was described by the English brain anatomist Thomas Willis (1621-1675), one of the group of medical experimenters in the university town of Oxford. Willis correlated different mental functions with different areas of the brain. Much study in the seventeenth century was given to the glands.

Who had been the first to discover the lymphatic system was disputed between the Swede Olof Rudbeck and the Danish anatomist Thomas Bartholin, after whom Bartholin’s duct and Bartholin’s glands were named. Anatomy had come far since the days of Vesalius, and had risen dramatically in prestige, becoming one of the most honored disciplines within medicine, and anatomy professors became leaders of medical faculties.

The first to introduce microscopy into anatomy was Marcello Malpighi, the greatest anatomist of the late seventeenth century, the discoverer and namesake of both the “Malpighian bodies” in the kidney and the “Malpighian layer” of the skin.

From 1656 to 1659 Malpighi was a professor of medicine at the University of Pisa where he met and was influenced by Giovanni Borelli (1608-1679), an iatromechanist who impressed on him the importance of the experimental method in medicine and the mechanical nature of bodies.

From 1666 he combined a professorship of practical medicine at Bologna with private practice until he moved to Rome on the reception of an appointment as personal physician to the new Pope Innocent XII (1615-1700) in 1691.

His first publication, in 1661, was On the Lungs which for the first time elucidated the internal structure of the lungs, and described the circulation of the blood through the capillaries, solving the longstanding puzzle of how the blood changed between the arteries and the veins. It was followed by works on the tongue and the brain, as well as a fundamental study of the anatomy of the silkworm published in 1669.

Malpighi believed it possible to better understand human anatomy by studying other animals–"comparative anatomy"–and even plants. His techniques included dissection, microscopic examination, and the injection of colored fluids enabling him to trace the connections of vessels and channels in the body.

Malpighi’s studies of the development of the chicken embryo laid the foundation for the science of embryology, and he also made important studies of the internal structure of plants. Applying the mechanical philosophy to anatomy, Malpighi conceived of the body as a series of glands.

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