Marcello Malpighi was an Italian physiologist which may be considered as the founder of microscopic anatomy as he was among the first few persons to use microscope for study of vegetable and animal structure.
Marcello Malpighi was born on 10th March 1628 in Crevalcuore which is near to Bologna. He grew up with parents and grandparents in the family owned farm and joined Bologna University at the age of seventeen to study Aristotelian philosophy. He was fond of microscope and had the habit of using microscope to amuse him. But soon after He entrance to university, He saw few deaths in his family as his mother, paternal grand mother and father died one by one. These deaths caused abandon as for his personal life and studies were concerned. After settling his life and family affairs once again, He joined university to study medicine. It was year 1653, when He got the degree of graduation as a doctor from Bologna University. He professor of anatomy married his younger sister Francesca Massari with Malpighi but she died after a year. He applied in same year for lecturer but his humble request was granted in 1656. He is a famous physiologist, his birthday is celebrated among famous birthdays in March, birthday gifts, birthday cards, are distributed among school children.
In 1656 itself, University of Pisa called him for a chair of theoretical medicine and he went there for three years. He was called by University of Messina in 1661 and he stayed for four years before leaving the place for Bologna. He spent next twenty years of his life with his native university but he left Bologna in 1691 to be deputed as private physician of Pope Innocent XII. Malpighi died in Rome on 30th September 1694.
As we know that Harvey inferred correctly the presence of capillary circulation but he could never see that. It was Marcello Malpighi who saw the spectacle of blood through network of smaller tubes on surface of lungs and of distended urine bladder of frog. That was the time, when we hadn’t good quality microscope and you should not be surprised to know that fact that it almost took four years to reach on a clear conclusion of corpuscles of frog’s blood.
First article of Malpighi was published in 1661 in journal of Royal Society of England and the article was not surprisingly about above mentioned experiments and results. In 1668, He joined the society as a fellow and he was first Italian to get that recognition. He wrote several papers from time to time which were published by society. Some of those include De viscerum structura: exercitatio anatomica, De structura glandularum conglobatarum, Opera posthuma, ET vita a seipso scripta.