MARCELLO, an eminent physician and anatomist, was born near Bologna in 1628. He studied medicine in that city, and graduated as doctor in 1653. In 1656 he became professor of medicine in the university of Bologna, but was promoted during the same year by Frederick II. of Tuscany to the medical chair at Pisa. There his intercourse with Borelli, the mathematician, tended greatly to convince Malpighi of the propriety of applying experimental researches to the study of medicine. He was soon forced, however, by declining health, to return to his former situation at Bologna; but in 1666 was called to the office of principal professor at Messina. The opposition, however, with which he was assailed by the advocates of the old school of medicine in that city, induced Malpighi to resign his chair after an incumbency of four years. From Bologna he was summoned in 1691 to Rome, to occupy the position of principal physician to Pope Innocent XII. The discharge of his new duties was rendered burdensome by attacks of gout, palpitation, and other diseases, and he died of apoplexy in 1694.

Malpighi's discoveries relate chiefly to the structure of the skin and of the secreting glands. He also devoted much attention to the organization of plants and the lower animals. His chief works are,—Observationes Anatomicae de Pulmonibus, Bologna, 1661; Epistolae Anatomicae de Lingua, de Cerebro, de Externo Tactus Organo, de Omento, de Pin- guidine et adiposis Ductibus, 12mo, Bologna, 1661–5; De Viscerum Structura, 4to, Bologna, 1666; Dissertatio Epistolica de Formatione Pulli in Ovo, 4to, London, 1666–73; Dissertatio Epistolica de Bombyce, 4to, London, 1669; and Epistolae de Glándulis Conglobatis, 4to, London, 1689. His grand work De Anatomie Plantarum appeared in 1669. A selection of his works, under the title of Opera Omnia, was published in 2 vols., London, 1686. His Opera Posthuma, edited by P. Regis, professor at Montpellier, was published at London in 1697.