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Talking Science at the University of Padua in the Age of Antonio Vallisneri
Brendan Dooley
Even for an accomplished scholar like Antonio Vallisneri, it was no simple matter to declaim extemporaneously in Latin before a public possibly demanding the best from a setting where Vesalius and Fabricius had once changed medical education forever in the West. Therefore successful completion of the inaugural lecture was a cause for celebration, so he wrote to the Tuscan grand ducal librarian Antonio Magliabechi in 1700: ‘Today is a holy day for me, since I made my solemn entrance into the university favoured by the applause of all the learned, the podesta` [of Padua] and the captain of the city’. The difficulty of the task was underscored by the special requirements of this setting: ‘I was able to speak for a whole hour with total clarity of memory and self-possession, such that I was myself surprised at my weak nature rendered so daring on this magnificently terrible occasion’. He recalled the unfortunate case of a law professor who failed at the same task ‘and died of woe a few days later’.1 But his work was far from done; and already as the school year began, he considered the daunting task before him: ‘I find the job particularly difficult, moreover, having to learn so many lessons by heart, which arrive at the number of eighty or more’2 As first professor of practical medicine, he was supposed to deliver a given number of lessons over portions of the period between September and June when classes were in session; and following a well-established custom, he walked into class each time without notes. Exactly what the students may have heard, and how the professor may have organized his ideas, the following pages will attempt to ascertain. 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.3 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 Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 118
118 History of Universities examinations and doctoral performances.4 These elements corresponding to acts of speech and hearing may now be examined in the light of what science historiography has already discovered concerning the rhetoric of scientific exposition.5 A forgotten world of scientific sociability is gradually coming into view, related but by no means identical to the world of the written text—and occasionally in conflict with the latter. The significance of this discovery is enormous, even if we grant that academic sociability in the forum of the voice was—and is—a quaint throwback to Medieval traditionalism, as is sometimes said.6 Vallisneri is a particularly apt case, at least regarding the university of Padua, because of the unusual amount of documentation. Apart from the vast correspondence consisting of over 10,000 letters that place him well within the ranks of communicators like Henry Oldenburg, there are several nearly complete years of lesson notes preseved in the original notes. Although student notes have apparently not survived to permit any comparison with these lecture notes, the material reveals the university lecture in this period to be an extraordinarily dynamic vehicle for the oral transmission of science—whether improvised or memorized (an extremely important distinction, as we will see). In what follows we will find Vallisneri diverging markedly from the topics and texts assigned to him in the class schedule, while at the same time filling his lectures with material drawn from his own personal research (whether related or not to the argument at hand). He was not the first example of these two related trends in the development of early modern teaching on natural philosophy (consider Geminiano Montanari, at Padua in the 1680s)7; nonetheless the documents in his regard are particularly impressive. On his arrival at Padua in 1700, 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), with the latter enjoying a slight advantage.8 When delivering the festive inaugural lecture, he had still more cause for concern than the mere problem of correct delivery 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 commentary in the autobiographical notes later Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 119
Talking Science at the University of Padua 119 published posthumously by Giovan Artico di Porcia. There the elements of a larger strategy emerge, whereby he apparently sought to pay false obeisance to the traditionalists in order to gain more freedom in expressing 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 candour and showed clearly where they went wrong.9 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. According to his own testimony, his method of teaching was as follows: First he explained the text assigned for that year, of Hippocrates, Galen or Avicenna, exactly according to what was in the text, the connection and the linkage to the preceding texts, the intentions of the author and briefly what the most famous commentators said. Then he expounded everything that the Moderns would say on the same subject, more enlightened than the ancients by so many discoveries and experiments. Then he gave himself over to instructing his scholars regarding what the most famous Italians or Transalpines had discovered to be true, communicating to them always new insights, others’ and his own (which were by no means very few nor very trivial).10 An analysis of the teaching itself should reveal to what extent this account reflects what really transpired. As holder of the first chair in practical medicine, Vallisneri was supposed, at least according to the official published schedule, to base his first year of lessons on the first Fen of Avicenna’s Liber Canonis, entitled De Febribus. However, he paid little attention to this text. The entire three-year course on practical medicine was designed to provide an overview of all diseases of the human body from the head downward, concluding with general diseases; and the lessons De Febribus happened to occur in the last year of the cycle.11 In the autobiographical notes, which are the only account we have of this first year, Vallisneri claims to have liquidated the ancient text in the first lesson, finding it ‘full of obvious lies, regarding both the causes and the seat of fevers’.12 Even the definition of Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 120
120 History of Universities fevers was misleading; so he undertook to correct it in the light of modern developments regarding the circulation and qualities of the blood. The lessons of the following year, i.e., 1701, have come down to us in an apparently more direct form: that of a sheaf of manuscript notes, now preserved in the Biblioteca Augusta in Perugia.13 These refer to the first year of the three-year cycle, regarding diseases of the head (remember that Vallisneri in his first year, 1700–1, actually taught the third year of the cycle); and therefore they were repeated in 1704 and 1707, when the cycle returned. They reveal with the utmost clarity the basis of Vallisneri’s advice to Louis Bourguet—namely, that information concerning the official texts was better obtained at home than at the university. Far from commenting on the text of Galen’s Ars medica as stipulated in the statute (i.e., the text required on the exam), these lessons begin with another text, one attributed to Vallisneri’s sixteenth-century predecessor in the chair of practical medicine, namely Ercole Sassonia.14 The purpose appears to be purely provocative, since Ercole’s suggestion to pay close attention to work by the ninth-century Arab writer al-Razi (Abu¯ Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakar¯ıya al-Razi)¯ is never taken seriously as the lessons develop. In the first lesson Vallisneri takes up the problem of defining cephalgia or any kind of pain in the head, beginning with a variety of present and past opinions and ending with criteria based on the part of the area affected and the shape of the pain (egg-shaped, key-shaped). Next come five lessons all based on his current research and observations, which in these years concerned worms in the human body (work later published as Considerations and Experiments on the Generation of the Ordinary Worms of the Human Body15). He excuses the apparent irrelevance by noting the many types of cephalgia caused by worms and other tiny organisms in the brain capable of disturbing the circulation of fluids and thus exerting pressure resulting in painful sensations, or else caused by tiny organisms disturbing the nerves elsewhere in the body. Clearly he was not unaware of having perhaps pushed his interpretation a bit too far; and upon this portion of the sheaf of lecture notes he added a reminder to the effect that ‘later I no longer gave these lessons in order not to bore the students with too many worms’.16 By the location of this reminder, we deduce that he was not referring to the next lessons, i.e., 8–9, which discussed cephalgia resulting from fungi in the brain or else from lesions caused by the advanced stages of syphillis—topics which he considered too important to omit. Finally, in such a broad panorama, he obviously did not neglect to discuss disturbances to the head caused by epilepsy Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 121
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(lessons 26 and following), mania (28), melancholy (20), amnesia (31), vertigo (33) and the like. As he promised in his inaugural, Vallisneri gave ample account of mod- ern developments in medicine (with occasional reference to the ancients); and the list of cited authors covers an astonishing range. Next to iatro- chemists like Daniel Sennert and Franciscus Sylvius de le Boe,¨ there are physiologists with botanical interests like Michael Etmuller,¨ physicians like Theophile´ Bonet, botanists like Johann Theodor Schenck, sur- geons like Johannes Schultes and Wilhelm Fabry (Guilhelmus Fabricius Hildanus). 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 ...’17 or else ‘Ex luxuriante humore frigido, crasso et viscoso procedendum, prout diximus de Melancholia,ˆ vel de Apoplexia,ˆ et praeter ea, aliqui habent in usu praescribere potum caffe´ vel cocolatae, et Herbae The’´ 18). A note to lesson 11 refers to information had from colleague Giambattista Morgagni: ‘he said that in the biblioteca anatomica of [Jean Jacques Manget] where there is 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 cutting tools were put away’.19 For a considerable portion of his information about contemporary research, Vallisneri drew upon the increasingly influential learned journ- als of his time. The list of cited references included the Journal des sc¸avans (here called ‘Gallicae eruditorum ephemerides’,) the Miscel- lanea curiosa of the Academia Leopoldina in Schweinfurt, the Nouvelles de la Republique´ des lettres begun by Pierre Bayle (here called ‘Novit- ates Reipublicae Litterariae’), and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (‘Acta Philosophica Angliae’, possibly read in the Amsterdam or Leipzig translations).20 Of Italian journals, the reference to ‘Ephemerides italicae’ occurring before 1710 (founding date of the authoritative Giornale de’ letterati d’Italia) must refer to Benedetto Bacchini’s Giornale de’ letterati, published 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 (although its presence, unique among the natural philosophy publications, on the Index librorum prohibitorum may also have been a factor). 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, Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 122
122 History of Universities the library situation in Padua imposed significant obstacles. 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 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, the Benedictines at Santa Giustina, or even the episcopal Seminary, 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 (perhaps with some exaggeration) to be equally poor in number of books and readers to read them, even if not almost always closed except on days of extraordinary visits by the university governing board.21 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 biologist Felice Viale. Although 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, Vallisneri (BAP cod. 1796) c. 184v. Monday Dec. 9, 1667 ...This was lately communicated in a letter from Danzick written by Dr. Fabritius, In Actis Phylos. Angl. Dec. 1667 Physician Ordinary to that city ...A from the physician Fabro physician married woman of 35, and a serving in Danzig: an epileptic woman was Maid of 20 years of age had been cured by an antiepileptic medicine both of them from their birth very infused in her vein by a surgical grievously afflicted with epileptic procedure fits ...there was injected into their veins a laxative rosin, dissolved in an anti-epileptical spirit ... Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 123
Talking Science at the University of Padua 123
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. Vidua Georgii Sperling, mercatoris, In Ephemeridibus Germanis Ann. X dum viveret, apud nos, Obs 50 de pertinacissimo capitis quinquagesimum aetatis iam egressa dolore ab inclusis vermibus excitato annum, de doloribus capitis legitur. 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 cuniculum quasi, hic 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 Vallisneri (BAP cod. 1796) c. 61v: p. 346: D. Aleardi Hermanni Cummeni: Singulari Hemicraniae solutione. Foemina quaerebatur de Legimus. ...quod foemina Hemicrania dextri lateris frontem querebatur de himicrania dextri potissimum infestante; adeo ut lateris frontem potissimum oculos aperire vix valeret. infestante, adeo ut oculos vix Administrata V. S.ne adhibentur aperire valeret.Postvariorum iridem Pillulae cephalicae a Domino remediorum usu, vel
124 History of Universities stillicidium ipsi in narium accideret, non sanguinis sed aquae ad tactum frigidissmae, in tanta copia, ut fere mensuram Guelferbytensem (ein Quartier) repleverit, et ex eo tempore omnes dolores capitis cessavere, sanaque fuit.
Whatever may have been Vallisneri’s expectations concerning his stu- dents’ 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. 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 following example demonstrates. The topic is worms in the human body and how they get there. Vallisneri tells the story of a young woman who was 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. On the right is the lesson, and on the left is the original article in the Miscellanea curiosa. Shared material is in italics.
Misc. Curiosa an 3 (1672): 480–1: Vallisneri (BAP cod. 1796) c. 22r: Puella annorum 18 in ditione Puella annorum 18 in ditione Bapepergensi Sambach, dum laboribus Bapepergensi in prato dormienti defatigata, in prato decumberet, vermiculus rotundus, dimidii dormienti vermiculus rotundus, dimidii auricularis longitudine, lumbricum auricularis longitudine, lumbricum crassitie adaequans, paulatim crassitie adaequans, paulatim rodendo rodendo in frontem ascendit, in frontem ascendit, inibique per inibique per quattuor septimanas quattuor septimanas hospitans hospitans incommoda puella peperit incommoda puella peperit quam quam plurima. Derelictae ab plurima. Mater illius undique consilium omnibus succurrit Jacobus Bertach quaesivit: derelictae ab omnibus pharmacopoeus, iubens, in aures succurrit Celsissimi Princips puellae reclinato capite inmetteretur Bapebergensis Pharmacopoeus Oleum Juniperinum, quo aliquoties Jacobus Bertach, iubens, in aures facto, due ejecti fuere vermiculi puellae reclinato capite inmetteretur minores albi, praedicti quippe Oleum Juniperinum, quo aliquoties soboles. facto, due ejecti fuere vermiculi minores albi, praedicti quippe soboles. Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 125
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Vallisneri has apparently copied down several paragraphs from the article and placed them in his lesson. As we shall see, this became his common practice.
Our account so far has not done complete justice to the documents in the collection at Perugia. In fact, in undertaking the inquiry described here, the researcher is faced not only with a puzzling series of conceptual problems, but with a highly disorganized mass of materials. Even the paper itself on which the lessons are written constitutes an interesting chaos of scraps glued to other scraps that must be turned this way and that in order to read what is written on one side or the other. Margins of old letters and envelopes, sent to Vallisneri or else prepared by him but never mailed, occasionally serve as writing paper, with their distracting inscriptions. After all, these are papers upon which he worked for nine years—or, at least for the three non-consecutive years in which this series in the larger cycle of lessons was repeated. The sequence is not linear and must be reconstructed. In the original, lesson eight is followed by lesson two; there are two lesson fives, two lesson sevens, lesson ten follows lesson sixteen, twenty-one follows eleven, and so forth. These are documents from which lessons would emerge—not from the paper but from the mind of Vallisneri, as we will see. A remark scribbled in at the top of lesson no. eight perhaps explains why the lessons look the way they do. It refers to the last time around the cycle, in 1707: These lessons will be made up of fragments of others so far omitted. First put headache from the French disease; then, according to my usual custom, put first the cases, then the theory, and finally attach the idea about cephalgia of Sylvius [deleBoe],¨ and follow in this manner to the end. Then go backwards, and put the beginning of the second lesson, which generally covers the causes of cephalgia, cephalea and migraine, and arrive to the beginning of the lesson on worms—then stop.22 Indeed, this remark is even more revealing, concerning Vallisneri’s approach to lesson preparation, than what he says in his autobiographical notes cited above. Whatever might have been the mode of composition of these les- sons, the result was always the same, at least according to Vallisneri himself: i.e., universal acclaim. Thus he distinguished himself from many of his contemporaries, of whom it was so frequently said that Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 126
126 History of Universities they lacked listeners. Indeed, so he insisted, his colleague Domen- ico Guglielmini, holder of the first chair of theoretical medicine, spoke to a deserted classroom after the first weeks. The reason: as a renowned hydraulic architect and mathematician (in spite of the chair he held), he filled his lessons with so many mathematical formulas that even the most curious students soon gave up. ‘He spoke with consumate learning about mathematical principles’, recalled Vallisneri, ‘but few students cared to listen because they did not understand his arguments’.23 Outside the classroom Vallisneri gained rapidly in prestige and notori- ety. His book Considerations on the Generation of Ordinary Worms was received with widespread admiration around the same time as the first volume was published of the highly promising Giornale de’ letterati d’Italia, on which he shared editorship with Apostolo Zeno and Scipione Maffei. His discoveries in the realms of botany and comparative anatomy came to the attention of Hans Sloane and occasioned his acceptance into the Royal Society. Because of his particular interests, Vallisneri hoped to move from the chair of practical medicine to the first chair of theoretical medicine. In 1709 he obtained the second chair of theoretical medicine while Guglielmini continued to hold the first chair; and when the latter died in 1711, he took over the first chair and remained there until his sudden death in 1730. Of course, the chair of theoretical medicine was subject to the same statute as other teaching at Padua; and every year the supposed content of the lessons was announced in the official schedule or rotulo:inthis case, the three-year cycle prescribed Galen’s Ars medica, Avicenna’s first book, and Hippocrates’ Aphorisms.24 In 1711, the cycle was in the third year and the text to be commented was Hippocrates. Although nothing has survived of Vallisneri’s first year of teaching in the new position except for the inaugural lecture, this lecture nonetheless gives sufficient proof of Vallisneri’s continued commitment to sustaining the cause of the innovators against the traditionalists in his faculty. Pre- served in a fine copy in Rovigo at the Biblioteca dei Concordi, the lesson undertakes to describe the ‘real’ Hippocrates as an excellent methodologist misrepresented by centuries of inept followers. Sloth and excessive adulation have long obscured the master’s actual teachings, which are now finally being rediscovered by the modern innovators. Indeed, Vallisneri suggests, every time the latter utilize observations and experiments, they are following the true method of Hippocrates; hence this academic year (he goes on) he will focus on the method Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 127
Talking Science at the University of Padua 127 and not the man. After all, the art of medicine derives precisely from experiment and observation—not vice versa.25 And if the his- tory of medicine has shown times of low productivity in terms of new cures, this has most often been due to an excessive regard for tradition.26 Except for the inaugural, we have no access to Vallisneri’s first year of teaching in the cycle. Nonetheless, we have a good number of lessons belonging to his second year of teaching, i.e., the year 1712, and the years in which he repeated the substance of those lectures, i.e., in 1715 and 1718. The manuscripts are preserved at the back of a codex at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice mostly containing letters and miscellaneous documents, in the usual disarray.27 The texts preserved concern the first year of the three-year cycle; keep in mind that Vallisneri took his position in the last year of the previous cycle. Galen’s Ars medica is the text announced in the rotulo. The text is totally ignored; and far from embarking on a general introduction to pathology, semeiotics, hygiene, and therapy, topics which at least would have satisfied the spirit if not the letter of the law (since these are the topics covered by Hippocrates), Vallisneri instead focused once again on his research for the latest publication. Thus a good portion of these lessons was devoted to human reproduction, the topic of perhaps his most important—certainly his most voluminous—work: namely, the History of the Generation of Man and Animals, published in 1721.28 Consider the following lecture titles:
Lecture 14: On the spermatic worms Lecture 18: The latest observations of the spermatic worms Lecture 20: Opposition to the spermatic worms Lecture 23: On the ovaries and more particularly on the structure of the female testicles Lecture 24: Malpighi’s opinion regarding the ovaries Lecture 26: The fetal tubes Lecture 29: On the egg arriving in the uterus. Lecture 32: On the fertilization of the egg
Any student desiring to brush up on Galen’s Ars medica would obviously have done well to heed Vallisneri’s advice to Bourguet: go elsewhere to prepare for the exam—or at least, to another pro- fessor. Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 128
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Now, to get the flavour of Vallisneri’s teaching in the first chair of theoretical medicine 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 begun by Adalberto Pazzini in the 1960s. They now comprise 9 volumes, of which the first contains the autobiographies, and the second contains the lessons for the year in question.29 It would be highly misleading to consider Morgagni among the traditionalists. However, his teaching differed significantly from Vallisneri’s. The first lesson introduced 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, chapters 4, 5, 6 of the text, whereas the fifth explains chapter 7, the sixth chapter 8, the seventh chapter 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 principal argu- ments 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’).30 It is well to recall the subtitle of the History of the Generation ..., 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 attributinig a predominant role to the spermatozoa, and likewise any theory of epigenesis or development of foeti from inchoate 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 been recited in class—from physiologists like Thomas Bartholin to protagonists in the microscopic observations, such as Robert Hooke, Richard Waller, Theophile´ Bonet, Nicolas Hartsoeker, Antoni Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 129
Talking Science at the University of Padua 129 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 sperma- tozoa had come to assume an increasingly important role in current discussions. Vallisneri explains the debate in terms that add colour to irony: In labyrintho Cretae homines aliquando fuerunt incerto, et dubio pede vagantes, nisi Ariadnae filo viam invenissent, per quod erumperent; Graeci narrant fab- ulam, sed non uti fabellam Angli, Batavi, Galli, Germani, Italique multissimi anatomici et medici narrant in labyrintheis testiculorum semitis homunciones vagari sub figura vermium, qui tandem exitum invenientes et uterum germinantes ingressi, ibi crescant, nidificent, et tandem in hominem perfectum se explicent et evolvant.31 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 Franc¸ois 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 Encyclopedie´ article on ‘Generation’, these observations were first published in Claude Bernard’s Nouvelles de la republique´ des lettres in 1699.32 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). Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 130
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Nouvelles de la republique´ des lettres, BNM: cod. it. X: 148 (6685), ‘Lect. 15’: Mai 1699, p. 552: Extrait d’une lettre de M. Dalempatius a` l’auteur de ces Mira agilitate se se agitant, caudaeque Nouvelles, concernant une decouvert´ verberibus undulas; quibus innatant, curieuse, faite par le moyen du cient, pulsantque. Corpus humanum in Microscope: istis qui crederet? Attamen illud ipsemet nostris vidimus oculis. Nam, ...Insuper animalicula quaedam dum omnia curiose castramus, unum deteximus, eadem fere forma, qua grandius exuto iam senio (sive exuta mense Maio, in rivulis, limosisque veste, aut exuvii) quo involuebatur, paludibus ranarum foetus videntur. se se aperuit, nudatusque clare ostendit Horum corpus vix granum frumenti ambas tibias, crura, pestus, gemina, superat, quedam grandiucula a cauda brachia et exuvium altius protractum autem quater aut quinies corpus caput adinstar cucullae obnubebat, adaequat; mira agilitate sese agitant, inverecundissimo sane et incredibili caudaeque verberibus, nudulas, spectaculo. quibus inatant, cient, pulsuntque. Corpus humanum in istis quis crediderit? Attamen illud ipsismet nostris vidimus oculis. Nam dum omnia curiose lustramus, unum grandius exuti iam συϕαρ´ , quo involvebatur, sese aperuit, nudatusque 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 force of the 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; multiple examples of manuscript diagrams were occasionally distributed in Padua lecturs, and of course there was always the blackboard. Indeed, more illustrations can be found in lecture 18, depicting the generation of frogs. However, the material transcribed into the lesson notes most likely was not meant to be utilized in class exactly as it is—instead, it provided essential information and a reservoir of concepts upon which to elaborate in the actual lesson. Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 131
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Figure 1. Vallisneri’s drawings from Dalempatius’ article in the Nouvelles de la republique´ des lettres (Venice: Biblioteca Marciana, cod. it. X: 148 (6685), lesson 18.
In this account of the documentation concerning lesson preparation, yet another episode helps make our point. Also in these years, Vallisneri was invited to teach a course at the hospital of Padua on ‘de pusibus et urinis’ during university intersessions. Reportedly, the argument was handled in the hospital because it was not regarded as being important enough for the university. Nonetheless, he had taken notes from lessons by Sbaraglia on this topic as a student in Bologna, and these notes are now preserved in the Library of the Civic Museum in Padua.33 He used these old notes now as the basis for his own teaching on the topic. What is remarkable about his approach is that Sbaraglia was reputedly one of the most dedicated supporters of the theories of the ancients—not to mention an opponent of the line of thought Vallisneri was sustaining in his research on reproduction.34 From these lessons, in fact, the documents show, Vallisneri first came to learn about the contemporary debates—for instance, in the section on Melancholia, where he carefully recorded what Sbaraglia had to say against Thomas Willis, De anima brutorum (Geneva, 1680), part 2 chapter 11, regarding the action of acerbic humors in the brain, eventually rejected by Sbaraglia in favor of Aristotle. Vallisneri now scribbled his own lessons upon the same sheets on which he had taken the notes to Sbaraglia. At times, he simply corrected the more obvious errors of concept and spelling, leaving a lesson more or less as it was.35 Other times, with his crossings-out and additions, he modified the entire orientation away from the traditional schemes and in the direction of modern research. ‘[The idea of] the facultas pulsifica’, he would say, ‘was imposed on students for so many centuries’’ ’. Students should now be liberated from the ‘tyrannical yoke’ of having to learn medicine ‘exclusively from commentaries’ on the ancients.36 Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 132
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Moreover, he abbreviated the portion which Sbaraglia had dedicated to the usual debates about the ancient theories, and included a section on new experiments concerning the chemical composition of the urine.37 ‘The ancient fathers deserve praise’, he explained, ‘but experiments and truth drawn out of the darkness merit even more’.38 Once again, the lesson itself, as recited in the hospital classroom, would have imparted the essence of the dispute between Vallisneri and Sbaraglia as presented in the notes, and perhaps even some of the terms, but not the entire language. The three collections of lessons we have examined here give a panorama of three decades of teaching by one of the leading biologists of the time. They obviously 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, as we have seen, claims (at least) to have memorized a text beforehand; and he complains, as we have said, about ‘having to learn so many lessons by heart’.39 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.40 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 for 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 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, we find that these very phrases are the beginnings of much longer paragraphs. The elaboration of the first phrase is on the right: Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 133
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BAP, ms. 1796, c. 251r: BAP, ms. 1796, c. 250r: Non satis est intestinum hostem Non satis est intestinum hostem nobiliora penetralia etc. nobiliora penetralia turbantem fugare N.N. Totis viribus, toto In genere omnia remedia, quae sunt Marte incumbendum est, ne antiepileptica etc. obsidionem tentet, ne muros plectat, ne interiora penetret. In Italia autem parum sunt in usu, Fugaviums in anteacta Praelectione tum ob delicatiorem etc. divexantem 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, orna- tissimi ac spectatissimi auditores, etc.41 Once again, we see here a strong element of bricolage. Samples of ideas are set down that will later be taken up, as in a writer’s notebook or a painter’s sketch book. 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, improvisation, spontaneity, creativity, and of course, the incorporation of one’s own research and others’ (even entire texts, Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 134
134 History of Universities dutifully acknowledged)—these were the characteristics of the best teaching obtainable in the classrooms of the university of Padua in the eighteenth century. Then as now, these characteristics are difficult to quantify; and they are especially difficult to grasp in our attempt to recreate the experience of spoken science three centuries ago. Yet the task is well worth the effort, if we are to gain a full picture of the cultural world of early science, one which takes account also of those sorts of productivity not directed to the making of objects to be possessed or exchanged, but toward the formation of discursive fields where ideas were born and thrived. For, in science as in other forms of communication, at least in some contexts, meaning was created (paraphrasing Derrida), by the interplay between the written and spoken word—not exclusively by one or the other.42
School of Humanities and Social Sciences Jacobs University Bremen 28759 Bremen Germany
REFERENCES 1. Vallisneri, Epistolario,i:1679–1710, ed. Dario Generali (Milan, 1991), 215: letter to Magliabechi dated 17 December 1700. 2. Vallisneri, Epistolario, i. 214, letter to Giovanni Battista Davini, dated 22 September 1700. Interesting reflections on the continuing use of Latin are in Franc¸oise Waquet, Le latin, ou l’empire d’un signe, XVI-XXe siecle` (Paris, 1998). Concerning the use of Latin at the University of Padua, Piero Del Negro, ‘ ‘‘Pura favella latina’’, ‘‘latino ordinario’’, ‘‘buono e pulito italiano’’ e ‘‘italiano anzi padovano’’. I ‘‘vari linguaggi’’ della didattica universitaria nella Padova del Settecento’, Annali di storia delle universita` italiane 3 (1999). 3. Just one example: F. Waquet, Parler comme un livre. Oralite´ et savoir, XVI- XXe siecles` (Paris, 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 (Chicago, 1993), chap. 2; Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-century 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), 35–64; as also the historiography on science and public culture: Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 135
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Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 1999); Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge, 1992), and, for France, Geoffrey V. Sutton, Science for a Polite Society: Gender, Culture and the Demonstration of Enlightenment (Boulder, Colorado, 1995); Jean-Franc¸ois Gauvin and Lewis Pyenson, The Art of Teaching Physics. The Eighteenth- Century Demonstration Apparatus of J. A. Nollet (Quebec, 2002). 4. Some 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 19/2 (2004), 129–87; Christopher Stray, ‘From Oral to Written Examination. Cambridge, Oxford and Dublin, 1700–1914’, History of Universities 20/2 (2005): 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 universita` italiane 9 (2005), 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, ed. Mordechai Feingold and Victor Navarro-Brotons (Dordrecht, 2006), 111–125; John Gascoigne, Cambridge in the Age of the Enlightenment. Science, Religion and Politics from the Restoration to the French Revolution ( Cambridge, 1989), chaps. 3, 6, 9; Giovanni Rita, ‘Dalla Controriforma ai Lumi. Ideologia e didattica nella ‘‘Sapienza’’ romana del Seicento’, Annali di storia delle universita` 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), 77–116; especially useful in relation to new kinds of sources, Laurence Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Oxford, 1987). For teaching at Padua, apart from my Science and the Marketplace in Early Modern Italy (Lanham, 2001) chaps. 4–5; note also Giuseppe Ongaro, ‘Morgagni uditore a Padova nel 1707’, Quaderni per la storia dell’Universita` di Padova 25 (1992), 323–58. Scattered information about teaching may also be found in: Federica Favino, ‘Matematica e matematici alla Sapienza romana, XVII-XVIII secolo’, Melanges´ de l’Ecole franc¸aisedeRome(ItalieetMediterran´ ee)´ 116/2 (2004), 423–69; Silvia Mazzone and Clara Silvia Roero, Jacob Hermann and the diffusion of the Leibnizian calculus in Italy (Florence, 1997); Andre´ Robinet, L’empire leibnizien: la conqueteˆ de la chaire de mathematiques´ de l’Universite´ de Padoue: Jakob Hermann et Nicolas Bernoulli, 1707–1719 avec de nombreuses lettres ineditesdeJ.etN.Bernoulli´ ...[et al.](Trieste, 1991). 5. In this regard, Marcello Pera and William R. Shea, Persuading Science: The Art of Scientific Rhetoric (Canton, MA, 1991); Alan Gross, TheRhetoricof Science (Cambridge, Mass., 1990); Jeanne Fahnestock, Rhetorical Figures in Science (Oxford, 1999); as well as the collection edited by Peter Dear, The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument (Philadelphia, 1991); more specifically related to Vallisneri is Maria Teresa Monti, ‘Introduction’, Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 136
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in Monti (ed.), Antonio Vallisneri. L’edizione del testo scientifico d’eta` moderna. Atti del Semiinario di studi, Scandiano, 12–13 ottobre 2001 (Florence, 2003), in particular, p. x. Concerning this last point, consider Intersezioni, 25 (2005); Silvia Vizzardelli, L’esitazione del senso. La musica nel pensierio di Hegel (Rome, 2001). Other specific instances that are worth mentioning include Jean Dietz Moss, Novelties in the Heavens: Rhetoric and Science in the Copernican Controversy (Chicago, 1993); Maurice Finocchiaro, Galileo and the Art of Reasoning: Rhetorical Foundation of Logic and Scientific Method (Dordrecht, 1980). 6. William Clark, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research Uni- versity (Chicago, 2006), 19. 7. Salvatore Rotta, ‘Scienza e ‘‘pubblica felicita’’` in Geminiano Montanari’, in Miscellanea Seicento (Florence, 1971), 187–99. 8. Gian Artico di Porcia, Notizie della vita e degli studi del Kavalier Antonio Vallisneri, ed. Dario Generali (Bologna, 1986), 64. 9. Porcia, Notizie,73 10. Porcia, Notizie,77 11. The official schedule is in Padua, Archivio Antico dell’Universita` di Padova, flz. 242, c. 81r. 12. Porcia, Notizie, 73–4 13. Perugia, Biblioteca Augusta [henceforth BAP], ms. 1796. 14. ‘Ercole Sassonia’, Enciclopedia Biografica Universale Treccani, s.n. 15. Considerazioni, ed esperienze intorno alla generazione de’ vermi ordinari del corpo umano, fatte da Antonio Vallisnieri, e da lui scritte ...(Padua, 1710) 16. BAP, ms. 1796, c. 26v. 17. BAP, ms. 1796, c. 75r. 18. BAP, ms. 1796, c. 230v. 19. BAP, ms. 1796, c. 40v. 20. Acta Philosophica Societatis Regiae in Anglia (Amsterdam, 1665–71); also (Leipzig, 1675) 21. Tiziana Pesenti Marangon, La Biblioteca Universitaria di Padova, 72. 22. BAP, ms. 1796, c. 43r. 23. Porcia, Notizie, p. 188. 24. Padua, Archivio Antico dell’Universita` di Padova, flz. 242, c. 101r. 25. Rovigo, Biblioteca dell’Accademia dei Concordi, mss Concordiani, 360/32, unnumbered pages, but 1v: ‘Dura morborum mortisque necessitas et insitum vivendi desiderium observationi et experientiae locum dedit; observatio et experientia medicinae’. Unsatisfactory is the translation in Manoscritti inediti, ed. Isidoro Ghibellini (Rovigo, 1953), 24. 26. Rovigo, Biblioteca dell’Accademia dei Concordi, mss Concordiani, 360/32, c. 2r (unnumbered): ‘Medicorum etenim post Hippocratem fereomnium` labores vel nimis in magistrum certe` optimum cultu vel, ut suspicari qui posset, segnitie quadam deferbuerunt, quippe` qui alienis contenti erant victitare laboribus et magni senis obdormire sapientiae’. Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 137
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27. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (= BNM), cod. it. X: 148 (6685). Note that there is no pagination; so lessons are noted by their name. 28. Istoria della generazione dell’uomo, e degli animali, se sia da’ vermicelli spermatici o dalle uova (Venice, 1721). 29. Opera postuma, vol. 2: Lezioni di medicina teorica: commento a Galeno (Roma, 1965). On Morgagni, a recent contribution is Valentina Gazzaniga and Elio de Angelis (eds), Giovan Battista Morgagni: perizie medico-legali (Rome, 2000). Apart from the works already mentioned, note the articles in Vincenzo Cappelletti and Federico Di Trocchio (eds) De sedibus, et causis: Morgagni nel centenario (Rome, 1986). 30. In the literature, Vallisneri has been called an ‘ovista, preformista, incapsu- latore di stretta osservanza’: Roberto Savelli ‘L’opera biologica di Antonio Vallisnieri’, Physis 3/4 (1961), 269–308, 286; although such older treat- ments 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, 1986), Parts 3 and 4. 31. BNM, lesson 15. 32. E. G. Ruestow, ‘Leeuwenhoek and the Campaign Against Spontaneous Generation’, Journal of the History of Biology 16 (1984), 185–224. 33. Padua, Biblioteca del Museo Civico, ms. C.M. 536. 34. Concerning Sbaraglia: Marta Cavazza, ‘The Uselessness of Anatomy: Mini and Sbaraglia versus Malpighi’ in D. Bertoloni Meli (ed.), Marcello Malpighi, Anatomist and Physician (Florence, 1997), 129–45. 35. At a certain point, where he had earlier written, ‘Therapia ex Sbaralea’, he cancels the name of Sbaraglia and places his own. Padua, Biblioteca del Museo Civico, ms. C.M. 536, c. 43r. The codex bears the title, ‘Sylva Medico-Physica-De Pulsibus’, noted also in the catalogue, whereas inside the document the title is ‘Flores ex recentiorum viridariis decerpti a me Antonio Vallsnerio in Bononiae Archigymnasio studente’. For what follows, see B. Dooley, ‘La scienza in aula nella rivoluzione scientifica: dallo Sbaraglia al Vallisneri’, Quaderni per la storia dello studio di Padova, 21 (1988): 23–44. 36. Padua, Biblioteca del Museo Civico, ms. C.M. 536, c. 21f: ‘Concludamus igitur quod facultas pulsifica satis habuit gloriae, satis per tot saecula credulo Tyronum volgo imposita [fuit]. Escussum est, N[obiles]I[uvenes], tyrannicum illud iugum, quod debeamus solum ex commentario sapere’. 37. For instance, Ibid., c. 33r: ‘Albumen pulverisatum nullam perturbationem parit urinae recenti et tepidae, sed frigidae aliquam excitat perturbationem, ita ut sedimentum crassum fundum petat. [...] Aqua fortis urina immixta magnam effervescentiam excitat, et praecipitat materiam albam’. 38. Ibid. c. 21r: ‘Laudentur antiqui patres [...] sed magis laudetur experientia, laudetur veritas a cimeriis eruta tenebris et caliginoso denudata flammeo’. 39. Epistolario, i. 214, letter to Giovanni Battista Davini, dated 22 Septem- ber 1700. Feingold run04.tex V1 - 07/20/2009 4:10pm Page 138
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40. Giovan Battisti Morgagni, Opera postuma, i: Le autobiografie (Rome, 1964), 38. 41. BAP, ms. 1796, c. 1v. 42. ‘The alleged derivativeness of writing...was possible only on one condition: that the ‘‘original’’ ‘‘natural’’ etc. language had never existed, never been intact and untouched by writing, that it had itself always been a writing. An arche-writing, whose necessity and new concept I wish to indicate’. Derrida begins the chapter with a citation from Rousseau: ‘Writing is nothing but the representation of speech’. Derrida, Of Grammatology (place, date for this edition), 46, 56.