To that most illustrious man, Lazarus Spallanzani, to whom credit is due for the fact that, although he had already explored the most minute and inaccessible of Nature’s pathways, he still sought to learn whether the existing limits of our knowledge of the truth might not be extended.[[13]]
In 1780, during his residence at Pavia, Spallanzani published two new volumes containing memoirs on vegetable and animal physiology. In one of these he discusses with great thoroughness the subject of digestion, and describes the difficult experiments which he made, largely upon birds, in order to ascertain the nature of this process. In this manner he ascertained that, in a very large number of animals (insects excepted), digestion is effected by a juice or fluid which dissolves the alimentary substances that have been introduced into the stomach. “One is filled with admiration,”—says his biographer and friend, Jean Senebier, of Geneva, Switzerland,—“as one peruses Spallanzani’s account of this series of experiments, and notices with what scrupulous care he formulates the conclusions which he draws from them with regard to the causes of the phenomena observed.” And yet, in 1786, John Hunter, the distinguished English anatomist and biologist, published a memoir (“Observations on Certain Points of the Animal Economy”) in which he dissents—somewhat sharply, says Senebier—from these conclusions. In 1788 Spallanzani published his reply to the observations made by Hunter and in this he points out, “with a logic so clear and convincing that it permits of no reply,” the errors of the English physiologist’s criticism.
In several other published memoirs Spallanzani deals with the problems of generation, the circulation of the blood, the respiration, etc.
To this very brief and imperfect sketch of one of the greatest biologists of the eighteenth century, I will simply add the statement: His death occurred, after a brief illness, February 11, 1799. In the parish church of Scandiano there has been erected a magnificent mausoleum in honor of Spallanzani.
Antonio Scarpa (1747–1832), a native of Motta near Treviso, Northern Italy, received his medical education at the University of Padua. He was particularly devoted to the study of anatomy, and, already in the second year of the course, he had made such progress that he was allowed to act as one of the prosectors. Morgagni, who was his teacher, became very much attached to him and did everything in his power to advance Scarpa’s interests. While he was still in the student stage of his career Scarpa went to Bologna and devoted himself for a few months to the cultivation of surgery. On his return to Padua he passed successfully the required examinations and was given the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Not long afterward he was called to fill the Chair of Anatomy and Surgery at the Medical School of Modena. After eight years of service in that institution he resigned and then visited France and England for the purpose of gaining further knowledge in those branches of medicine in which he was specially interested. In 1783 he accepted a call from the University of Pavia to occupy the Chair of Anatomy, and remained undisturbed in this position for twelve years. In the year 1796, however, at the time when Pavia became a part of the newly founded Cisalpine Republic, Scarpa was asked to take the oath of allegiance to the new government, an oath which was required of all the functionaries of the university. Not being willing to do this he was obliged to resign his professorship. In 1805, Napoleon, after being crowned King of Italy at Milan, passed through Pavia on his way back to Paris. On this occasion he asked to have the university professors presented to him, and, failing to find Scarpa among those who attended the reception, he asked what had become of him, for his great reputation as an anatomist was well known to him. Then he learned how Scarpa had been compelled, by reason of his unwillingness to sign the oath, to resign his position in the university. “Well,” replied Napoleon, “what if he did refuse to take the oath, and what have political opinions to do with teaching anatomy? Scarpa confers honor upon the University and upon the country which I now govern, and I wish that he be restored to his former position.” He was accordingly restored to his professorship and during the following seven years—that is, up to 1812—Scarpa continued his work of teaching anatomy and of conducting the surgical clinic. During the later years of his life he was a great sufferer from calculous nephritis and chronic disease of the urinary bladder, and these diseases finally caused his death on October 31, 1832.
Dezeimeris, in his estimate of the part played by Scarpa in advancing the science of medicine, lays particular stress upon the following two things: first, he was very active and persisted in his efforts to impress upon surgeons the importance of considering a knowledge of anatomy as affording the only safe and sure route to progress in the surgical art; and, second, he furnished a number of beautiful examples that showed the necessity of throwing additional light upon the different diseases by the employment of demonstrations in topographical and pathological anatomy.
His more important published works are—aside from the value of the text—chefs-d’oeuvre of iconography. Such, for example, are the following: “De Structura Fenestrae Rotundae Auris etc.,” Modena, 1772; “De Grangliis et Plexubus Nervorum,” Modena, 1779; “Anatomicae Disquisitiones de Auditu et Olfactu,” Pavia, 1789; and “Opuscoli di Chirurgia,” Pavia, 1825–1832, 3 vols.
Samuel-Auguste-André-David Tissot (1728). The Tissots are of Italian origin. Alessandro Tissoni, the youngest son of one of the first families of Spoleto, accompanied Prince Louis on his crusade to the Holy Land in 1147, and, after escaping from the disasters incident to the siege of Damascus, he managed to regain his native land along with the forlorn remnants of Louis’ army. As he had joined the expedition contrary to the wishes of his parents he felt that it would not do for him to return to Spoleto. At first, therefore, he was a homeless wanderer in his own country. Fortunately for him, however, three of his companions in arms bequeathed to him all their property just before they died from their wounds; and consequently one of his first cares, after he returned to Italy, was to gain possession of his legacies. In the case of one of the three men there was a sister living, and so—partly from love and partly in order to escape any unpleasant legal complications—Alessandro married her, and the couple took possession of the deceased brother’s landed property. Some of this property, it so happened, was located in Franche-Comté, near the present city of Besançon, and it was while he resided in this part of France (1152) that he changed his name to Tissot, thus putting an end to the possibility that his relatives in Spoleto would ever be able successfully to claim any part of his property. Samuel-André’s father, Pierre Tissot, a land surveyor who resided in Grancy, not far from Lausanne, entered his son’s name (May 15, 1741) at the Academy of Geneva, in the department of belles-lettres. In August, 1745, he received the degree of M.A., and on the fourteenth of the following month of September he started on his journey to Montpellier where he was to study medicine. Four years later he passed all his examinations creditably and was given the degree of M.D. He chose Lausanne as his place of residence, and was successful, at the end of one year, in obtaining the position of Physician of the Poor. Early in 1745 he made the acquaintance of Albrecht von Haller, the celebrated physiologist of Berne, and about the same time he became deeply attached to Dr. Théodore Tronchin, a native of Geneva, but engaged in active practice at Paris. These two men were the most distinguished Swiss Physicians of that period.