1
The University of Padua and the Learned Journal in the Early Eighteenth Century
L'université de Padoue et les journaux savants au début du XVIIIe siècle. - Les leçons de médecine et d'histoire naturelle d’Antonio Vallisneri à l'université de Padoue constituent une source significative pour étudier l'usage des journaux savants dans l'enseignement universitaire au début du XVIIIe siècle. En effet, Vallisneri cite très souvent les journaux et il lui arrive de construire des leçons presqu'entières à partir d'extraits d'articles. Dans ce chapitre, on tentera de dégager la signification de cette utilisation pour l'histoire des journaux savants mais aussi celle des universités.
One morning in 1701 Antonio Vallisneri, First Professor of Practical Medicine at the University of Padua, delivered his lecture on diseases of the head to the usual packed audience. As was his custom, he paid as little attention as possible to the official text upon which the lesson was to be based according to the university statutes and the course description as stated in the yearly rotulo or class schedule. In fact, on this particular day he entirely ignored the first Fen, entitled De Febribus, of Avicenna’s Liber Canonis, preferring instead to devote the lesson to recent cases and theories. And in explaining a case of headache caused by worms, he told the story of a young woman who had been resting by a field in a prone position when a worm crawled into her ear and remained there for several weeks—a condition to which the doctors thereupon applied their most ingenious methods. In the ponderous modern Latin of university discourse, he had this to say:
Puellae annorum 18 in ditione Bapepergensi in prato dormienti vermiculus rotundus, dimidii auricularis longitudine, lumbricum crassitie adaequans, aurem subentravit dextram, et paulatim rodendo in frontem ascendit, inibique per quattuor septimanas hospitans incommoda puella peperit quam plurima. Multa remedia interna, et externa, praescripta, sed omnia incassum. Derelictae ab omnibus succurrit Jacobus Bertach pharmacopoeus, iubens, in aures puellae reclinato capite inmetteretur Oleum Juniperinum, quo aliquoties facto, due ejecti fuere vermiculi minores albi, praedicti quippe soboles.1
1 Perugia, Biblioteca Augusta [=BAP] cod. 1796, c. 22r. 2
Where the information came from he dutifully informed his students—as his lecture notes for that session in the year 1701 clearly show: “Misc. Curiosa an 3 1672.” That the information indeed came from the Miscellanea curiosa of the Academia Leopoldina in Schweinfurt, Germany, is easily provable by reference to the journal itself. And there we find the identical citation, which we reproduce below with italics showing in italics the portions omitted or modified by Vallisneri:
Puellae annorum 18 in ditione Bapepergensi Sambach, dum laboribus defatigata, in prato decumberet, dormienti vermiculus rotundus, dimidii auricularis longitudine, lumbricum crassitie adaequans, aurem subentravit dextram, et paulatim rodendo in frontem ascendit, inibique per quattuor septimanas hospitans incommoda puellae peperit quam plurima. Mater illius undique consilium quaesivit: derelictae ab omnibus succurrit Celsissimi Princips Bapeberger.sis Pharmacopoeus Jacobus Bertach, iubens, in aures puellae reclinato capite inmitteretur Oleum Juniperinum, quo aliquoties facto, duo ejecti fuere vermiculi minores albi, praedicti quippe soboles.2
It was not the first time Vallisneri had brought material from the learned journals into class; nor would it be the last. Yet his lessons are some of the earliest testimonies we have of the actual in- class use of material from the first learned journals.
Vallisneri at Padua
Before analyzing this and other cases, let us say something about Vallisneri’s life and accomplishments. Born in the vicinity of Lucca in 1661, he studied medicine at Bologna under Marcello Malpighi and Girolamo Sbaraglia, eventually finishing his degree at Reggio Emilia. By the last years of the 17th century he was devoting most of his energies to the observation of nature, and the first significant fruit of this effort was the “Dialogues Concerning the Curious Origin of Many Insects” published in the short-lived learned journal “Galleria di Minerva between 1696 and 1700. This work placed him squarely within the tradition of naturalistic exploration in Northern Italy, running from Vesalius, Fabricius and Harvey through Malpighi by way of Francesco Redi.3 Called to the University of Padua in 1700, he attempted to introduce
2 Misc. Curiosa an 3 (1672): 480-1: 3 The bibliography on Vallisneri is vast. A rapid resume in English is Rhoda Rappaport, “Italy and Europe: The Case of Antonio Vallisneri (1661-1730),” History of Science, 29, 1991, pp. 73-98; see also her When Geologists were Historians, 1665-1750, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1997, passim. On the same topic in reference to Vallisneri are relevant portions of Paolo Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time. The History of the Earth and the History of Nations from Hooke to Vico, Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1984. Apart 3 empirical methods into university research, including the use of instruments for minute and comparative anatomy. In his thoughts concerning natural history, he assimilated a Cartesian world view without accepting an entirely mechanistic analysis of nature, campaigned against spontaneous generation, and contributed to the preformism-epigenesis controversy. These aspects, along with his essays in paleontology, are all represented in the vast corpus of his publications, printed together for the first time posthumously by the son in 1733, three years after the father’s death, in three massive in folio volumes.4 Among the first items to appear recently in the new National Edition are manuscripts showingVallisneri at work as a practicing physician who endeavors to applyi the insights of naturalistic observation as well as iatrochemical methods to the practical business of curing, in a wide array of medical consultations.5 More closely related to our concerns here is his involvement as a scientific communicator—not ony through the vast system of correspondence, but as editor, with Scipione Maffei and Apostolo Zeno, of the first successful encyclopedic journal published in Italy, the Giornale de’ letterati d’Italia (1710- 40).6 Now we will find him engaged as a communicator of scientific results in the classroom. Indeed, learned journals were fundamental for Vallisneri’s teaching, and they furnished not only the themes but even the very words spoken, as we have seen. A complete history of the reception of early modern learned journals will thus certainly have to take account of oral presentation as a means of diffusion, collecting as many as possible of the kinds of testimonies of which Vallisneri is such an extraordinarily rich example. The end result could be a new appraisal of the role of this genre in general in eighteenth-century society. This paper will attempt to assess this role not only from the standpoint of the history of the diffusion of learned journals, but also from that of the history of teaching. from the titles noted below, mention should be made here of the contributions to the cited volume, Antonio Vallisneri. L’edizione del testo scientifico d’età moderna, Atti del Semiinario di studi, Scandiano, 12-13 ottobre 2001, ed. Maria Teresa Monti, Firenze, Olschki, 2003; as well as the forthcoming proceedings to the conference “Vallisneri. La figura, il contesto, le immagini storiografiche, Milano, 23-23 giugno, 2006”; and several works by Dario Generali, including “Antonio Vallisneri Senior e la tradizione medica galileiana nel ‘Saggio di osservazioni microscopiche’ di Spallanzani,” Il cerchio della vita. Materiali di ricerca del Centro Studi Lazzaro Spallanzani di Scandiano sulla storia della scienza del Settecento, ed. Walter Bernardi and Paola Manzini, Florence, Olschki, 1999, pp. 107-16; Idem, “A. V. ‘corrispondente’ leibniziano,” Rapporti di scienziati europei con lo studio bolognese fra ‘600 e ‘700: Studi e memorie per la storia dell’Università di Bologna, n.s. vol. VI, ed. Marta Cavazza, Bologna, Istituto per la storia dell’Università, 1987, pp. 125-140. Concerning his early career, Dario Generali, A. V.: Gli anni della formazione e le prime ricerche, Florence, Olschki, forthcoming; as well as A. V., Quaderni di osservazioni, vol. 1, ed. Concetta Pennuto, Florence, Olschki, 2004; vol. 2 ed. Marco Bresadola with the collaboration of Concetta Pennuto and Andrea Castellani, Florence, Olschki, forthcoming. For the bibliography of Vallisneri’s own works, note D. Generali, Bibliografia delle opere di A. V., Florence, Olschki, 2004. Concerning the situation at Bologna, apart from the works already cited, there is G. Ongaro, Morgagni a Bologna, in Rapporti tra le università di Padova e Bologna : ricerche di filosofia, medicina e scienza : omaggio dell'Università di Padova all'Alma mater bolognese nel suo nono centenario, ed. Lucia Rossetti, Trieste, Lint, 1988, pp. 255-306; G. PIAIA, Note sulla formazione filosofica del Morgagni, in Ibid., pp. 307-24. 4 Antonio Vallisneri, Opere fisico-mediche, 3 vols., Venice, Sebastiano Coleti, 1733. 5 Edited by Benedino Gemelli for the Edizione Nazionale, Consulti medici, Florence, Olschki, 2006. 6 See my Science Politics and Society in Eighteenth-Century Italy: The “Giornale de’ letterati d’Italia” and its World, New York, Garland, 1991, chaps. 1-2. 4
For tracing the use of learned journals in Vallisneri’s early eighteenth-century classroom, we have an extraordinary source: namely, the lessons themselves. Of a 30-year teaching career stretching from 1700 to 1730 personal lesson notes for the equivalent of nearly 7 years of teaching have been preserved. We will concern ourselves here mainly with two manuscripts. The first, now preserved in the Biblioteca Augusta in Perugia [=BAP], 7 contains lesson notes regarding the first year, devoted to diseases of the head, of a three-year cycle on practical medicine. Vallisneri first gave these lessons in his second year of teaching, namely, 1701, and repeated them in 1704 and 1707, each time the cycle returned. The second manuscript, preserved in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice [=BNM], 9 regards the first year, devoted to the reproduction of living things, of a three-year cycle on theoretical medicine. Vallisneri gave these lessons in his second year of teaching in the chair of theoretical medicine, namely, the year 1712, and in the years in which he repeated the substance of those lectures, i.e., in 1715 and 1718. This precious documentation provides insights into a number of aspects of university history that have hitherto been little studied. What we now know about teaching complements what has already been discovered concerning student demography, classroom buildings, museums, gardens of simples, colleges housing for the various nationes, and student rioting.11 And the more we know about all these aspects the better we are able to appraise the institutional contexts where a considerable number of the key researchers spent most of their careers.12
7 Perugia, Biblioteca Augusta [=BAP], ms. 1796. 9 Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana [= BNM], cod. it. X: 148 (6685). Note that there is no pagination; so lessons are noted by their name. 11Concerning new structures and new disciplines, see G. A. Salandin and M. Pancino, Il ‘teatro’ di filosofia sperimentale di Giovanni Poleni, Centro per la storia dell’Università di Padova, Contributi 19, Trieste, Lint, 1987); V. Giormani, “L'insegnamento della chimica all'Università di Padova,” Quaderni per la storia dell'Università di Padova, 17,1984, pp. 91-133; Marta Cavazza, “Orti botanici, teatri anatomici, osservatori astronomici, musei e gabinetti scientifici,” in Roger Chartier and Jacques Revel, (ed.)Les universités dans l'Europe moderne, Paris, 1986, vol. 1, pp. 86ff, Tiziana Pesenti Marangon, La Biblioteca Universitaria di Padova dalla sua istituzione alla fine della Repubblica Veneta (1629- 1797), Padua, Antenore, 1979; . Concerning student demographics, Donald Kagan, “Universities in Italy, 1500-1700,” Les universités dans l'Europe moderne, vol. 1, pp. 153-86; Elena Brambilla, “Università, scuola e professioni in Italia dal primo Settecento alla Restaurazzione. Dalla costituzione per ordini alle borghesie ottocentesche,” Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 9, 1997, pp. 391-401; Gli studenti nella storia dell’università di Padova. 5 conferenze ed. Francesco Piovan, Padua Università, 2002; concerning student behavior, Francesca Zen Benetti, “Il Seicento,” and P. del Negro, “Il Settecento fino alla caduta della Repubblica,” in P. del Negro and Francesco Piovan, eds., L’Università di Padova nei secoli 1601-1805: Documenti di storia dell’Ateneo, Padova, Università, 2002, respectively, at pp. 20-114 ; 149-340; on colleges: Piero Del Negro, ed., I collegi per gli studenti dell’Università di Padova, Padua, Signum, 2003; also, Domenico Maffei and Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, eds., I collegi universitari in Europa tra XIV e XVIII secoli, Milan, Giuffré, 1991. 12 On this point, Ann Blair, “Natural Philosophy,” Cambridge History of Science, vol. 3, Early Modern Science, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 389; Laurence Brockliss, “Science, the Universities and Other Public Spaces. Teaching Science in Europe and the Americas,” Cambridge History of Science, vol. 4: Eighteenth-Century Science, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 44-45. In addition, J. Gascoigne, “A Reappraisal of the Role of Universities in the Scientific Revolution,” in David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman, (eds.), Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 207-60. Compare William Clark’s impressive Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University, University of Chicago, 2006, omitting Padua, Bologna, 5
The history of classroom instruction adds a new dimension not only to the history of universities, but to the emerging historiography of the oral culture of knowledge. 13 From new kinds of evidence around Europe, we are finding out more and more about early modern teaching styles and their effects on students; and the same goes for early modern oral examinations and doctoral performances. 14 These elements corresponding to acts of speech and hearing may now be examined in the light of what science historians have already suggested concerning the rhetoric of scientific exposition.15 A forgotten world of scientific sociability is gradually coming into
Naples, Turin and the other Italian universities entirely from its purview, regards academic professionalism as largely the product of German bureaucratic administration. 13 Just one example: F. Waquet, Parler comme un livre. Oralité et savoir, XVI-XXe siècles, Paris, Albin Michel, 2003; although there is no doubt that the historiography on science and performance has contributed also to illuminating this problem: Mario Biagioli, Galileo Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism, Berkeley, 1993, chap. 2; Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in 17c England, Chicago, 1994, chaps. 2-3; Paula Findlen, “Controlling the Experiment: Rhetoric, Court Patronage and the Experimental Method of Francesco Redi,” History of Science, 31, 1993, pp. 35-64; as also the bibliography on science and public culture: Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760-1820, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999; Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660-1750, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992, and, for France, Geoffrey V. Sutton, Science for a Polite Society: Gender, Culture and the Demonstration of Enlightenment, Boulder, Colo., Westview Press, 1995; Jean-François Gauvin and Lewis Pyenson, The Art of Teaching Physics. The Eighteenth-Century Demonstration Apparatus of J. A. Nollet, Quebec, Septentrion, 2002. 14Some examples on exams and dissertations: Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang, “From Oral Disputation to Written Text: The Transformation of the Dissertation in Early Modern Europe,” History of Universities 19 no. 2, 2004; Christopher Stray, “From Oral to Written Examination. Cambridge, Oxford and Dublin, 1700-1914,” History of Universities 20/2, 2005, pp.76-130. On teaching: Ugo Baldini, “L'insegnamento fisico-matematico nella Scuola di S. Rocco, 1600-1768: verso una ricognizione dei materiali didattici,” Annali di storia delle università Italian, 9, 2005, pp. 65-90; Maija Kallinen, “Lectures and Practices: the Variety of Mathematical and Mechanical teaching at the university of Uppsala in the 17th century,” Universities and Science in the Early Modern Period, Mordechai Feingold and Victor Navarro-Brotons (ed.), Springer Netherlands, 2006, pp. 111-125; John Gascoigne, Cambridge in the Age of the Enlightenment. Science, Religion and Politics from the Restoration to the French Revolution, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, chaps. 3, 6, 9; Giovanni Rita, “Dalla Controriforma ai Lumi. Ideologia e didattica nella Sapienza romana del Seicento,” Annali di storia delle università italiane 9 (2005): 247-68; John C. Powers, “Chemistry Enters the University: Hermann Boerhaave and the Reform of the Chemical Arts,” History of Universities 21/2, 2006, pp. 77-116; especially useful in relation to new kinds of sources, Laurence Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987. For teaching at Padua, apart from my Science and the Marketplace in Early Modern Italy, Lexington Books, 2001, chaps. 4-5; note also Giuseppe Ongaro, “Morgagni uditore a Padova nel 1707,” Quaderni per la storia dell'Università di Padova, 25, 1992, pp. 323-358. Scattered information about teaching may also be found in: Federica Favino, “Matematica e matematici alla Sapienza romana, XVII-XVIII secolo,” Mélanges de L'Ecole française de Rome (Italie et Méditerranée, 116, n. 2, 2004, pp. 423-469; Silvia Mazzone and Clara Silvia Roero, Jacob Hermann and the diffusion of the Leibnizian calculus in Italy, Florence, L.S. Olschki, 1997; André Robinet, L'empire leibnizien : la conquête de la chaire de mathématiques de l'Université de Padoue : Jakob Hermann et Nicolas Bernoulli, 1707-1719 avec de nombreuses lettres inédites de J. et N. Bernoulli ... [et al.], Trieste, Lint, 1991. 15In this regard, Marcello Pera and William R. Shea, Persuading Science: The Art of Scientific Rhetoric, Canton, MA, Science History Publications, 1991; Alan Gross, The Rhetoric of Science, Harvard, 1990; Jeanne Fahnestock, Rhetorical Figures in Science, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999; as well as the collection edited by Peter Dear, The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991; more specifically related to Vallisneri is Maria Teresa Monti,“Introduction” Antonio Vallisneri. L’edizione del testo scientifico d’età moderna. Atti del Semiinario di studi, Scandiano, 12-13 ottobre 2001, Maria Teresa Monti (ed.), Firenze, Olschki, 2003, in particular, p. x. Concerning this last point, consider Intersezioni, vol 25, August 2005; 6 view, related to, but by no means identical to, the world of the written text—and occasionally in conflict with the latter.16 On his arrival at Padua, Vallisneri quickly established the style of teaching that would be his trademark. He found the faculty divided between innovators (Pompeo Sacco, Domenico Guglielmini and others) and traditionalists (Michelangelo Molinetti, Giacomo Viscardi and others), the latter group enjoying a slight advantage.17 When delivering the festive inaugural lecture, he had still more cause for concern than the mere problem of correct delivery about which we reported at the beginning of this paper. He was expected to take sides; instead he offered an uneasy compromise, as the title of the lecture proclaimed: “The Studies of the Moderns Do Not Overthrow the Medicine of the Ancients, But Confirm It.” No trace of this inaugural has yet been found except for Vallisneri’s own autobiographical commentary in notes published posthumously by Giovan Artico di Porcia. There he explains the elements of a larger strategy of paying false obeisance to the traditionalists while gaining more freedom to express his own views. Here is what he later says about the general reception to the major theme of his lecture, and his subsequent practice:
This reasoning of Vallisneri was greatly appreciated and praised by the majority of the professors and physicians, who were all followers of the ancient school. They hoped he would continue always to defend their old doctrines, whether good or bad. But in the lessons that he gave, subsequent to this, they noticed that instead he inclined to the moderns, although he attempted to reconcile cleverly the different systems, where he could. Nonetheless, as the two are often irreconcilable, he opposed the ancients with his usual candor and showed clearly where they went wrong.18
As time went by, the portion of the lectures devoted to his own research and that of his contemporaries increased, eventually crowding out the ancients almost entirely. As he promised in his inaugural, Vallisneri gave ample account of modern developments in medicine (with occasional reference to the ancients); and the list of cited authors covers an astonishing range. Next to iatrochemists like Daniel Sennert and Franciscus Sylvius de le Boë,
Silvia Vizzardelli, L’esitazione del senso. La musica nel pensierio di Hegel, Rome, Bulzoni, 2001. Other specific instances that are worth mentioning include Jean Dietz Moss, Novelties in the Heavens: Rhetoric and Science in the Copernican Controversy, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993; Maurice Finocchiaro, Galileo and the Art of Reasoning: Rhetorical Foundation of Logic and Scientific Method, “Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science”, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1980. 16 William Clark, Academic Charisma, p. 19, regards academic sociability in the forum of the voice as a quaint throwback to Medieval traditionalism. 17 Gian Artico di Porcia, Notizie della vita e degli studi del Kavalier Antonio Vallisneri, Dario Generali (ed.), Bologna, Pàtron, 1986, p. 64. 18 Porcia, Notizie, p. 73 7 there are physiologists with botanical interests like Michael Etmüller, physicians like Théophile Bonet, botanists like Johann Theodor Schenck, surgeons like Johannes Schultes and Wilhelm Fabry (Guilhelmus Fabricius Hildanus), not to mention his own correspondents in the Veneto, such as Guglielmo Gratarol. Frequent reference is made to pharmaceutical preparations and cures, ancient and modern (“Inter haec igitur tamquam anodyna dolore mitigantia enumeratur: succus aut mucilago malvae, vel altheae, cum oleo rosario, vel cum lacte muliebri capiti applicata . . .”19 or else “Ex luxuriante humore frigido, crasso et viscoso procedendum, prout diximus de Melancholiâ, vel de Apoplexiâ, et praeter ea, aliqui habent in usu praescribere potum caffé vel cocolatae, et Herbae Thé”20). A note to lesson 11 refers to information had from colleague Giambattista Morgagni: “he said that in the biblioteca anatomica of [Jean Jacques] Manget in a treatise De Cerebro, there is a case of fungus in the dura madre, which once removed returned immediately to germinate as soon as the cuttinig tools were put away.”21
Journals in the Classroom
For a considerable portion of his information about contemporary research, Vallisneri drew upon the increasingly influential learned journals of his time. The list of cited references included the Journal des sçavans (here called “Gallicae eruditorum ephemerides”) the Miscellanea curiosa of the Academia Leopoldina, the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres begun by Pierre Bayle (here called “Novitates Reipublicae Litterariae”), the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (“Acta Philosophica Angliae,” possibly read in the Amsterdam or Leipzig translations22). Of Italian journals, the reference to “Ephemerides italicae” occurring before 1710 (founding date of the authoritative Giornale de’ letterati d’Italia) must designate Benedetto Bacchini’s Giornale de’ letterati, published sporadically in Parma and later Modena between 1686 and 1697. Strangely absent from this list is any reference to the Acta eruditorum, perhaps because of that journal’s less frequent attention to medical matters. Most probably, in providing this information, Vallisneri did not expect students to seek out the original texts, at least not right away. If he did, the library situation in Padua was hardly encouraging. For books, the professors themselves relied largely upon their own collections, which they assembled by forming their own networks of connections with booksellers all over Europe, often mediated through large firms like the Hertz and Baglioni in Venice or the Comino
19 BAP, ms. 1796, c. 75r. 20 BAP, ms. 1796, c. 230v. 21 BAP, ms. 1796, c. 40v. 22 Acta Philosophica Societatis Regiae in Anglia, Amsterdam, Henricum & Theodorum Boom, pp. 1665-71; also, Leipzig: J. Fritzschii, 1675. 8 in Padua. How often they consulted the better-furnished libraries of the local convents such as that of the Franciscans at St. Anthony’s basilica cannot be discerned; and their letters are equally mute concerning their use of the still fledgling university library established in 1629, twenty years after the Bodleian, but never really developed. By the early eighteenth century this library was reported to have insufficient books, too few readers to read them, and irregular opening hours.23 Journals in particular were not regularly acquired by the library until the second half of the eighteenth century, although there may have been scattered volumes in the collections bequeathed by the lawyer Giovanbattista Rainis and the naturalist Felice Viale. If Vallisneri’s citation practices would not always have been much help to students intending to seek out the material he cited (particular journal titles may be clear, but the volume number or article is often entirely missing), nonetheless our results demonstrate that he made good use of the journals in his lessons. Consider this reference to an article in the Philosophical Transactions concerning an epileptic woman cured by an intravenous injection of some medical preparation, which occurs in the lecture on epilepsy. On the left is an excerpt from the original article:
Original article Vallisneri’s text Philosophical Transactions, Monday Dec. 9, Vallisneri (BAP cod. 1796) c. 184v. 1667. . . This was lately communicated in a letter from Danzick written by Dr. Fabritius, In Actis Phylos. Angl. Dec. 1667 from the Physician Ordinary to that city . .. A married physician Fabro physician in Danzig: an epileptic woman of 35, and a serving Maid of 20 years woman was cured by an antiepileptic medicine of age had been both of them from their birth infused in her vein by a surgical procedure very grievously afflicted with epileptic fits . . . there was injected into their veins a laxative rosin, dissolved in an anti-epileptical spirit.
23 Tiziana Pesenti Marangon, La Biblioteca Universitaria di Padova, p. 72. 9
Consider another case, this time concerning an article in the Miscellanea curiosa about severe headache due to worms:
Miscellanea curiosa 9-10 (1679) Vallisneri (BAP cod. 1796), c. 14v: obs. 50, p. 127. Obs. D. Joannis Schmidii de verme capitis. In Ephemeridibus Germanis Ann. X Obs 50 de Vidua Georgii Sperling, mercatoris, pertinacissimo capitis dolore ab inclusis dum viveret, apud nos, quinquagesimum vermibus excitato legitur. aetatis iam egressa annum, de doloribus capitis conquerebatur derepente intolerabilibus, qui adeo miseram excruciabant, ut insomnes plerasque ducere noctes cogeretur; sentiebat in fronte cursum vermis, ut aiebat, ad aurem dextram, ex hac iterum cuniculos quasi, hinc inde ad frontem...
Occasionally the citations repeated the exact phrasing in the original, as in the following concerning a woman with a severe migraine, for which various cures were tried (portions in common are in italics):
M. Curiosa 3 (1672) obs. 183 p. 346: D. Aleardi Hermanni Cummeni: Singulari Vallisneri (BAP cod. 1796) c. 61v: Hemicraniae solutione. Foemina quaerebatur de Hemicrania dextri Legimus.... quod foemina querebatur de lateris frontem potissimum infestante; adeo ut himicrania dextri lateris frontem potissimum oculos aperire vix valeret. Administrata V. infestante, adeo ut oculos vix aperire valeret. S.ne adhibentur itidem Pillulae cephalicae a Post variorum remediorum usum, vel
Whatever may have been Vallisneri’s expectations concerning his students’ future use of this material, there can be no doubt from these instances that spoken science was an important point of diffusion for information in the journals. 10
However, the role of journals in spoken science appears to go much further. For Vallisneri did not only cite articles. Sometimes he appears to have built entire lessons on journal excerpts, as the example cited at the beginning of this paper demonstrates. In that example, Vallisneri apparently copied down several paragraphs from the article and placed them in his lesson. As we shall see, this became his common practice. As we said, Vallisneri was promoted to the first chair of theoretical medicine in 1711. To get the flavor of his teaching in this period we might compare his lessons to those on theoretical medicine delivered on the same topic in the same years by Giambattista Morgagni, his friend and associate on the Giornale de’ letterati d’Italia, who came to Padua in 1712 to take the second chair vacated by Vallisneri. The Morgagni lesson manuscripts in the Ashburnham collection at the Laurentian Library in Florence were published in a fine edition by Adalberto Pazzini in the 1960s.24 It would be highly misleading to consider Morgagni among the traditionalists. However, his teaching differed significantly from Vallisneri’s. The first Morgagni lesson introduces the three texts to be explained, namely, Galen’s Ars medica, Hippocrates’ Aphorisms and the first book of Avicenna. Subsequently, each lesson begins with the presentation of the text to be commented. After a more or less detailed analysis of this text, there follows a series of criticisms based on new research; but the text always furnishes the structure of the lesson. Thus, the second lesson sets out to explicate the first chapter of the Ars medica. The third takes up chapters 2-3, the fourth, chaps. 4, 5, 6 of the text, whereas the fifth explains chap. 7, the sixth chap. 8, the seventh chap. 9 and so forth, each time analyzing the doctrine of Galen and then bringing in the latest authorities. In the lessons for these years, Vallisneri laid out the principle arguments for his theory of the reproduction of living things, based on the three cardinal notions: like produces like, all creatures come from eggs of some kind (“ovism”), and fecundation simply vivifies preformed material already in existence from previous generations (“preformism” and “involucrism”).25 It is well to recall the subtitle of the History of the Generation of Man and Animals, namely, Whether Generation is Effected by the Spermatic Worms or by Eggs. Thus, a good portion of these lessons was devoted to debunking any theory attributing a predominant role to the spermatozoa, and likewise any theory of epigenesis or development of foeti from incohate matter, including versions of the Aristotelian theory of spontaneous generation. Names of key figures in the lively debates surrounding these issues parade across the pages of the documents, as they must have
24 Opera postuma, vol. 2, Lezioni di medicina teorica: commento a Galeno, Roma, Istituto di storia della medicina dell’università, 1965. On Morgagni, a recent contribution is Giovan Battista Morgagni: perizie medico-legali, ed. Valentina Gazzaniga and Elio de Angelis, Rome, Carocci, 2000. Apart from the works already mentioned, note the articles in De sedibus, et causis: Morgagni nel centenario, Vincenzo Cappelletti, Federico Di Trocchio (eds.), Roma, Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1986. 25 In the literature, Vallisneri has been called an “ovista, preformista, incapsulatore di stretta osservanza” Roberto Savelli “L’opera biologica di A. V.” Physis 3 no. 4 (1961): 286; although such older treatments can be misleading. See the relevant portions of Walter Bernardi, Le metafisiche dell’embrione: scienze della vita e filosofia da Malpighi a Spallanzani, 1672-1793, Florence, Olschki, 1986, Parts 3 and 4. 11 been recited in class—ranging from physiologists like Thomas Bartholin to protagonists in the microscopic observations, such as Robert Hooke, Richard Waller, Théophile Bonet, Nicolas Hartsoeker, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, including citations to works, chapters and pages (‘Fatetur Levenhochius in epistula ad D. Christoph Wren . . . , p. 207’ [lesson no. 20]). Vallisneri’s own observations of the similarities and differences between plants and animals (a topic covered in great detail in the eventual publication) are accompanied by weights and measures, as: “Ponderavi insuper in alio tempore ovis materiam luteam, et ponderabat gr. 18” [lesson no. 23]. Discovered by Leeuwenhoeck some thirty years before, the spermatozoa had come to assume an increasingly important role in current discussions. Vallisneri explains the debate in terms that add color to irony:
In labyrintho Cretae homines aliquando fuisse incerto, et dubio pede vagantes, nisi Ariadnae filo viam invenissent, per quod erumperent; Graecae narrant fabellae, sed non uti fabellam Angli, Batavi, Galli, Germani, Italique multissimi anatomici et medici narrant in labyrintheis testiculorum semitibus homunciones vagari sub figura vermium, qui tandem exitum invenientes et uterum foemineum ingressi, ibi crescant, nidifcent, et tandem in hominem perfectum se explicent et evolvant.26
In a typical lesson, no. 20, Vallisneri undertakes to “impugn the spermatic worms,” against which various arguments are adduced. The worms cannot themselves be fetuses, he says, because there are far too many, and nature does nothing in vain—moreover, they do not resemble human fetuses as observed in the uterus. Indeed, the form of the sperm appears in some ways similar in all species which have them, even those with the most contrasting characteristics. Finally, Leeuwenhoek himself, among the most dedicated proponents of the thesis (says Vallisneri), was never able to view the actual spermatatozoa in the corpus luteum of a fertilized ovum. Vallisneri’s solution comes later in the year: the spermatozoa excite but do not inform the ovum, in which all generative power resides. The famous observations by François de la Plantade (Dalempatius) of tiny homunculi emerging from the sperm cells could obviously be a problem for the “ovist” view. Probably invented, and later branded as a hoax by Jean-Pierre Aumont in the Encyclopédie article on “Generation”, these observations were first published in Claude Bernard’s Nouvelles de la République des Lettres in 1699.27 In Lesson 15, Vallisneri reports on them by copying a sizeable excerpt of text describing tiny men shedding the outer sperm covering as though it were a kind of tunic (shared portions in italics).
26 BNM, lesson 15. 27 E. G. Ruestow, “Leeuwenhoek and the Campaign Against Spontaneous Generation,” Journal of the History of Biology, 16, 1984, pp.185-224. 12
Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, Mai BNM: cod. it. X: 148 (6685), “Lect. 15”: 1699, p. 553: Extrait d’une lettre de M. Dalempatius à l’auteur de ces Nouvelles, Mira agilitate se se agitant, caudaeque concernant une découverte curieuse, faite par le verberibus undulas; quibus innatant, cient, moyen du Microscope: pulsantque. Corpus humanum in istis quis crederet? Attamen illud ipsismet nostris . . . Insuper animalcula quaedam deteximus, vidimus oculis. Nam, dum omnia curiose eadem fere forma, qua, mense Maio, in rivulis, castramus, unum grandius exuto iam senio limosisque paludibus ranarum foetus videntur. (sive exuta veste, aut exuvii) quo involuebatur, Horum corpus vix granum frumenti superat, se se aperuit, nudatasque clare ostendit ambas quedam grandiucula ; a cauda autem quater aut tibias, crura, pectus, gemina brachia, et quinies corpus adaequat; mira agilitate sese exuvium altius protractum caput adinstar agitant, caudaeque verberibus, undulas, quibus cucullae obnubebat, inverecundissimo sane et innatant, cient, pulsantque. Corpus humanum incredibili spectaculo. in istis quis crediderit? Attamen illud ipsismet nostris vidimus oculis. Nam dum omnia, curiose lustramus, unum grandius exuto iam σύφαρ, quo involvebatur, sese aperuit, nudatasque clare ostendit ambas tibias, crura, pectus, gemina brachia, et exuvium altius protractum caput ad instar cucullae obnubebat.
With the slight modifications evident in the above text, Vallisneri incorporates nearly the entire letter into his lesson. This he follows with a lengthy criticism centered on the the fervid imagination, the defects of lenses, and improper control over the liquid sample. Whether he intended to copy and distribute the original article’s fantastic accompanying illustrations, upon which volumes of commentary were made at the time and which he carefully drew in his notes (Fig. 1), we cannot say.
Fig. 1: Vallisneri’s drawings from Dalempatius’ article in the Novelles de la republique des lettres (Venice: Biblioteca Marciana, cod. it. X: 148 (6685), lesson 18.
13
What we do know is that manuscript diagrams were occasionally distributed in multiple copies for lectures at Padua, and that the blackboard was being used, notably by Vallisneri’s colleague Giovanni Poleni.28 Indeed, more illustrations can be found in lecture 18, depicting the generation of frogs (Fig. 1).
From Written Science to Oral Science
The two collections of lessons we have examined here give testimony to three decades of teaching by one of the leading naturalists of the time. We should therefore be able to answer the question of whether students actually heard page upon page of text from the learned journals and were expected to copy what they heard into their own class notes. And the answer is a definite “no”. Current research suggests that the lessons as we find them provided essential information and a reservoir of concepts upon which to elaborate in the actual teaching. They do not offer a perfectly faithful representation of that teaching. In every case we have discussed, the handwritten page is not the lesson itself—especially because the lesson was delivered without notes, so we are still at a secondary remove from what occurred in class. A superficial comparison of these documents with those concerning the teaching activity of Vallisneri’s colleague Giambattista Morgagni might suggest differences in approach. The former claims repeatedly to have memorized a text beforehand; and he complains about “having to learn so many lessons by heart”29 Morgagni on the other hand, in his autobiographical memoirs, claims to have delivered his lessons not only without notes, but without preparation. He would simply walk into class and speak about the topic for the day, then he would go home and write up what he remembered having said.30 This at least would explain the remarkable orderliness encountered by Pazzini when publishing the documents extant in the Ashburnham collection. However, we ought to be wary of any presumed distinction between a Vallisneri excellent memorizer and a Morgagni brilliant improviser. Vallisneri’s lecture notes tell a more nuanced story. They are in fact a mass of semiordered ideas, not finished texts to be remembered and recited word for word. Indeed, the notes referring to any average day, read aloud at moderate speed, yield scarcely twenty minutes. They obviously furnished merely a basic armature upon which Vallisneri might build as the hour wore on. A curious half-sheet attached to lesson 36 among the Perugia manuscripts, concerning vertigo and paroxysms, reinforces this point. It
28 Giovanni Poleni refers to using a "pietra nera" in 1721, as I point out in Science and the Marketplace in Early Modern Italy, New York, 2001, chap 5, note 67, citing Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Riformatori filza 83, 30 January 1720-21. 29 Epistolario, vol. 1, p. 214, letter to Giovanni Battista Davini, dated 22 September 1700. 30 Opera postuma, vol. 1: Le autobiografie, Rome, Istituto di storia della medicina dell’università, 1964, p. 38. 14 contains a list of incomplete phrases of which a sampling can be found in the left-hand box below. Now, if we examine the “complete” document to lesson 36, extant in the same collection, we find that these very phrases are the beginnings of much longer paragraphs. The elaboration of the first phrase is on the right:
BAP, ms. 1796, c. 251r: BAP, ms. 1796, c. 250r: Non satis est intestinum hostem nobiliora Non satis est intestinum hostem nobiliora penetralia etc. penetralia turbantem fugare N.N. Totis viribus, In genere omnia remedia, quae sunt toto Marte incumbendum est, ne obsidionem antiepileptica etc. tentet, ne muros plectat, ne interiora penetret. In Italia autem parum sunt in usu, tum ob Fugaviums in anteacta Praelectione divexantem delicatiorem etc. in paroxysmo vertiginem. Nunc omni cura explorandum est, ne patientem amplius invadat. Inprimis igitur causa vertiginis perscrutanda et removenda. Observandum est attento animo an dependeat a ventriculo, an ab utero an ab hypocondriis, vel a visceribus abdominis, an sua sedes sit in Capite, vel ab extremis causis oriatur.
Apparently the smaller sheet contained a reminder about the main points that would be elaborated when the time came, keeping in mind the material already pieced together in the longer version of the lesson. Yet another sheet, unattached to any lesson, appears to contain sample openings, to be utilized as the occasion arose:
Illustrissimi et sapientissimi patres, vel professores, nobilissimi et florentissimi iuvenes, omnis litteraturae cultissimi, ornatissimi auditores, vel... Illustrissimi et sapientissimi patres, praestantissimi ac studiosissimi artis Phoebeae alumni, celeberrima ac famigeratissima auditorum corona, vel... Illustrissimi et sapientissimi patres, celebris artis celeberrimi sectatores, ornatissimi ac spectatissimi auditores, etc.31
Once again, a strong element of bricolage prevails. Samples of ideas are set down that will later be taken up, as in a writer’s notebook. Therefore, concerning the daily practice of teaching, Morgagni apparently says too much, and Vallisneri says too little: diligent memorizer though he was, Vallisneri was also an improviser. Indeed, the similarity between Vallisneri’s lecture notes and a writer’s notebook, or now let us say, a naturalist’s notebook, is by no means casual; and we end with some reflections on the relation between teaching and research. In fact, Vallisneri habitually made copious records of
31 BAP, ms. 1796, c. 1v. 15 what he saw, heard or read; and the so-called “Quaderni di osservazioni” published by the Edizione Nazionale delle Opere contain numerous references, collected by Vallisneri, that would appear in some form in the later published works. However, we should hardly be surprised if we rarely find material transported from the lesson notes to the published works in exactly the same form—and this not only owing to the difference in context or the Latin idiom. Vallisneri did not merely publish his lecture notes, which were intended for a public of students. Nor was he a “cut and paste” writer. He composed works meant to argue his case with rhetorical consistency as well as persuasive data, designed for a specific forum. However, as we have seen, the lecture notes provide a precious insight into thought processes, otherwise inaccessible, that deserve all the study we are able to devote to them.
Brendan Dooley University College Cork