Here his fame was in the ascendant, notwithstanding the machinations of his enemies and detractors, led by Sbaraglia. He was soon (1662) called to Messina to follow the famous Castelli. After a residence there of four years he again returned to Bologna. He retired to a villa near the city, and devoted himself to anatomical studies.
Malpighi's talents were appreciated even at home. The University of Bologna honored him Id 1686 with a Latin eulogium, the city erected a monument to his memory, and after his death, in the city of Eome, his body was brought to Bologna and interred with great pomp and ceremony. He also received recognition from abroad, but that is less remarkable. In 1668 he was elected an honorary member of the Royal Society of London. He was very sensible of this honor; he kept in communication with the society; he presented them with his portrait, and deposited in their archives the original drawings illustrating the development of the chick.
In 1691 he was taken to Rome by the newly elected Pope, Innocent XII, as his personal physician, but under these new conditions he was not destined to live many years. He died there, in 1694, of apoplexy. His wife, of whom it appears that he was very fond, had died a short time previously. Among his posthumous works is a sort of personal psychology written down to the year 1691, in which he shows the growth of his mind and the way in which he came to take up the different subjects of investigation.
In reference to his discoveries and the position he occupies in the history of natural science, it should be observed that he deserves the title of an 'original as well as a very profound observer.' While the ideas of anatomy were still vague 'he applied himself with ardor and sagacity to the study of the fine structure of the different parts of the body'; he extended his studies to the structure of plants and different animals, and a]so to development. Entering as he did, a new and unexplored territory, he, of course, made many discoveries, but no man of mean talents could have done his work. He used every method at his command for investigating the structure of tissues and animal forms—macerating, boiling, injections of ink and colored fluids, and also applied the microscope to the discovery of tissues.
During forty years of his life he was always busy with research. Many of his discoveries had practical bearing on the advance of anatomy and physiology as related to medicine. In 1661 he demonstrated the structure of the lungs. Previously these organs had been regarded as a sort of homogeneous parenchyma. He showed the presence of aircells, and had a tolerably correct idea of how the air and blood are brought together in the lungs, the two never actually in contact, but always separated by a membrane. These discoveries were first made on the frog, and applied by analogy to the interpretation of the lungs
