March 10

Marcello Malpighi was born on the 10th in 1628 in Italy. He initially entered the University of Bologna at the age of 17 to study Aristotelian Philosophy. Like many entering college however he soon switched majors and decided to become a physician. My guess is that he did this to extend his time in college. Not, of course, that I even considered doing such a thing. He found his niche after making the switch however and went on to have a prosperous and happy career. He did a great deal of work with the aid of a relatively new tool – the microscope. He made quite a few discoveries in his work. You know, stuff like finding out that insects do not use lungs to breath. He also did ground breaking work in the study of development of chicken embryos in their eggs. He was the first person to discover and describe human taste buds. However, if the FBI should appear at your home to execute an arrest warrant, before you go blaming whatever rat turned you in, blame Marcello, because it was his work that led him to the discovery of human fingerprints.
Malpighi was Pope Innocent XII’s physician and he also taught medicine at the Papal Medical School