Mechanism, Experiment, Disease Marcello Malpighi and Seventeenth-Century Anatomy

The strength of Meli's work lies in his attention to detail in highly complex Latin works, and in his sensitivity to unpublished work, correspondence, diaries, and above all, to the technologies of illustration. -- William Poole Times Higher Education 2011 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. JAMA 2012 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. -- Helen Bynum JAMA 2012 The most comprehensive account to date of the works of Marcello Malpighi. -- Stephanie Eichberg The British Journal for the History of Science 2012 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. -- Maria Pia Donato Isis 2012