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Have you ever wondered who discovered what was inside your body? Who found out about your spleen and lungs? Who discovered the structure of your brain? The answer to those questions is, scientist, Marcello Malpighi. Let’s take a look at what wonderful things this brilliant man accomplished.
Malpighi was born at Crevalcore, just outside Bologna, Italy, on March 10, 1628.
His parents were small landowners at a farm. Malpighi went to the University of Bologna where he studied medicine and philosophy. In 1655, Malpighi became a lecturer in logic at the University of Bologna. Then in 1656, he had assumed chair of theoretical medicine at the University of Pisa. He then returned to Bologna and became chair of theoretical medicine at the University of Messina.
While attending all of these colleges as the chair of theoretical medicine, Malpighi made a lot of discoveries that are important to us today. During his career Malpighi started to favor the microscope and life structure. His first discovery was the structure of the lungs. He discovered this by looking at the lungs of a frog. Malpighi described the lungs as, thin air sacs surrounded by a network of tiny blood vessels. This discovery helped Malpighi explain how oxygen is able to diffuse into the blood vessels, a key to understanding the process of respiration. Malpighi discovered the capillaries which are, the microscopic connecting links between the veins and arteries. This discovery led to the discovery of malpighian corpuscles. Malpighian corpuscles are bunches of capillaries in a capsule and is attached to a tubule in the kidneys. Malpighi also described the structure of the kidney. He described it as having many little wormlike vessels which are called the renal tubules in the outermost layer which he said had no structure. He predicted that these vessels had something to do with the kidney but could not figure it out. Malpighi also discovered that the kidneys produced our urine. He also...