Marcello Malpighi Quotes

Surgical knowledge depends on long practice, not from speculations.

Nature has but one plan of operation, invariably the same in the smallest things as well as in the largest, and so often do we see the smallest masses selected for use in Nature, that even enormous ones are built up solely by fitting these together. Indeed, all Nature's efforts are devoted to uniting the smallest parts of our bodies in such a way that all things whatsoever, however diverse they may be, which coalesce in the structure of living things construct the parts by means of a sort of compendium.

The seed is the fetus, in other words, a true plant with its parts (that is, its leaves, of which there are usually two, its stalk or stem, and its bud) completely fashioned.

This, however, seems to be certain: the ichor, that is, the material I have mentioned that finally becomes red, exists before the heart begins to beat, but the heart exists and even beats before the blood reddens.

Nature, ... in order to carry out the marvelous operations [that occur] in animals and plants has been pleased to construct their organized bodies with a very large number of machines, which are of necessity made up of extremely minute parts so shaped and situated as to form a marvelous organ, the structure and composition of which are usually invisible to the naked eye without the aid of a microscope ... Just as Nature deserves praise and admiration for making machines so small, so too the physician who observes them to the best of his ability is worthy of praise, not blame, for he must also correct and repair these machines as well as he can every time they get out of order.

For Nature is accustomed to rehearse with certain large, perhaps baser, and all classes of wild (animals), and to place in the imperfect the rudiments of the perfect animals.

It is therefore proper to acknowledge that the first filaments of the chick preexist in the egg and have a deeper origin, exactly as [the embryo] in the eggs of plants.

I have destroyed almost the whole race of frogs, which does not happen in that savage Batrachomyomachia of Homerr. For in the anatomy of frogs, which, by favour of my very excellent colleague D. Carolo Fracassato, I had set on foot in order to become more certain about the membranous substance of the lungs, it happened to me to see such things that not undeservedly I can better make use of that [saying] of Homer for the present matter
'I see with my eyes a work trusty and great.'
For in this (frog anatomy) owing to the simplicity of the structure, and the almost complete transparency of the vessels which admits the eye into the interior, things are more clearly shown so that they will bring the light to other more obscure matters.

In such sad circumstances I but see myself exalted by my own enemies, for in order to defeat some small works of mine they try to make the whole rational medicine and anatomy fall, as if I were myself these noble disciplines.

We are many small puppets moved by fate and fortune through strings unseen by us; therefore, if it is so as I think, one has to prepare oneself with a good heart and indifference to accept things coming towards us, because they cannot be avoided, and to oppose them requires a violence that tears our souls too deeply, and it seems that both fortune and men are always busy in affairs for our dislike because the former is blind and the latter only think of their interest.