Antonio Vallisneri

Antonio Vallisnieri

Antonio Vallisneri , also Valli (e) snieri, (born May 3, 1661 in Trassilico , now part of Gallicano in Tuscany , † January 18, 1730 in Padua ) was an Italian doctor who is considered an early pioneer of geology.

Life

Vallisneri, the son of a lawyer, was born at Trassilico Castle in Garfagnana in what is now the province of Lucca and went to school in his parents' hometown in Scandiano and with the Jesuits in Modena and Reggio nell'Emilia . He studied medicine in Bologna from 1683 , but at the direction of the Duke of Modena, like other students from the Duchy of Modena at that time, had to obtain his degree there, where he came from, at the College of Reggio (1685). He then continued his studies in Bologna, in particular natural philosophy and anatomy with Marcello Malpighi , where he also took practical anatomy lessons (autopsies on corpses) from privately teaching anatomists. Further studies followed in Venice , Padua and Parma before he settled in Scandiano as a doctor in 1689. Since this was not enough for his scientific ambitions, he began to work as a botanist, among other things with his own medicinal herb garden , went on excursions and began to build up his natural history cabinet. From 1700 he was professor of practical medicine alongside Bernardino Ramazzini (1633–1714) and as successor to Pompeo Sacchi (1634–1718), who switched to the chair of theoretical medicine. In 1709 he became professor of anamnesis (then called for pulse and urine, De pulsibus et urinis) and from 1710 for theoretical medicine, as the successor to Domenico Guglielmini (1655-1710), which he remained until his death.

In the sense of the experimental investigation initiated by Galileo Galilei in Italy, he dealt with a wide variety of natural phenomena, alongside human medicine and veterinary medicine, with biology, botany, hydrology and geology. In this sense, too, he advocated the justification of medical knowledge through precise anatomical studies and experiments, instead of relying primarily on ancient authorities. Although he initially proceeded cautiously and diplomatically in Padua, this brought him into conflict with contemporary doctors and scientists who adhered to Aristotelianism. But he had the support of influential Venetians who paved his further career in Padua. Vallisneri visited Venice frequently and was very respected there. He made anatomical drawings of insects and collected minerals and biological preparations for his natural history cabinet.

He also collected fossils, for example from the Pliocene of the Adriatic coast, and believed them to be the remains of living beings (like Nicolaus Steno before ). Like Steno, he assumed several floods instead of a biblical flood (which he did not deny), corresponding to the finding of sediment layers. His contemporaries Johann Jakob Scheuchzer , who was in correspondence with Vallisneri, and John Woodward , on the other hand, were well-known proponents of the theory of a single (biblical) flood. He believed that uplifts of the earth were possible, such as those observed in volcanoes. In a paper from 1715, he traced sources back to seeping rain and meltwater (as previously Bernard Palissy , Edmé Mariotte , Pierre Perrault ). There were other theories then that springs were fed by seawater. He rejected a spontaneous generation of Aristotle (for example of eels from mud). He studied the behavior and reproduction of insects and microscopic parasites.

He was also valued for his clear and precise scientific writing style, whereby he did not use the scientific language of the time Latin, but, like Galileo, Italian. From 1709 he briefly published a Giornale de 'Letterati d'Italia with Scipione Maffei and Apostolo Zeno .

In 1692 he married the fifteen-year-old Laura Mattacodi, with whom he had many children (18 sometimes difficult pregnancies).

His son Antonio (1708–1777) donated his natural history to the university in 1733. He was a professor of science there. Antonio also published his father's works posthumously. The work edition also contains a biography and the catalog of his natural history cabinet.

Vallisnieri was in lively correspondence with other European scientists, including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz . Leibniz encouraged him to intensify his research on embryogenesis, geology and natural history.

Honors

The plant genus Vallisneria is named after him by Linnaeus. In 1705 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1707 a member of the Leopoldina .

Fonts

Originals

• Saggio de 'dialoghi sopra la curiosa origine di molti insetti, "Galleria di Minerva", I, pp. 297-322, Venice: Albrizzi 1696
• Secondo dialogo sopra la curiosa origine di molti insetti, "Galleria di Minerva", III, pp. 297-318, Venice: Albrizzi 1700
• Dialoghi sopra la curiosa origine di molti insetti, Venice: Albrizzi
• Prima raccolta d'osservationi e d'esperienze, Venice: Albrizzi 1710
• Considerazioni, ed esperienze intorno al creduto cervello di bue impietrito, Stamperia del Seminario, Padua 1710
• Considerazioni, ed esperienze intorno alla generazione de 'vermi ordinarj del corpo umano, Stamperia del Seminario, Padu1 1710
• Esperienze, ed osservazioni intorno all'origine, sviluppi, e costumi di varj insetti, Stamperia del Seminario, Padua 1713
• Nuove osservazioni, ed esperienze intorno all'ovaja scoperta né vermi tondi dell'uomo, e de 'vitelli, Stamperia del Seminario, Padua 1713
• Istoria del camaleonte Affricano e di varj animali d'Italia, Venice: Ertz 1714
• Nuova idea del male contagioso de 'buoi, Milan: Pandolfo 1714
• Lezione accademica intorno all'origine delle fontane, Vendedig: Ertz 1714
• Istoria della generazione dell'uomo, e degli animali, se sia da'vermicelli spermatici, o dalle uova, con un trattato nel fine della sterilità, e dei suoi rimedj, Venice: Hertz 1721
• Lezione accademica intorno l'origine delle fontane, Venice: Pietro Poletti, 1726
• De 'corpi marini che su' Monti si trovano; della loro origine, e dello stato del mondo avanti il ​​Diluvio, nel Diluvio, e dopo il Diluvio: Lettere Critiche, Venice: Domenico Lovisa, 1721, 2nd edition 1728 (On the origin of fossils)
• Dell'uso, e dell'abuso delle bevande, e bagnature calde, o fredde, Modena: Capponi, 1725
• Esperienze ed osservazioni, Tipografia del Seminario, Padua 1726
• Opere Fisico-Mediche stampate e manoscritte del Antonio Vallisneri raccolte da Antonio suo figliuolo, Venice: Coletti, 3 volumes 1733

Annotated editions

• Francesco Luzzini: Theory, Practice, and Nature In-between. Antonio Vallisneri's Primi Itineris Specimen. (Sources 9) Edition Open Sources 2018, ISBN 9783945561324 .

literature

• Eugen Seibold , Ilse Seibold : Antonio Vallisnieri - a modern geologist 300 years ago , in: Geologische Rundschau 90, 2001, 903-910
• Giuseppe Montalenti: Vallisnieri , in: Dictionary of Scientific Biography
• Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Vallisnieri (Vallisneri), Antonio. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1435.
• Ivano Dal Prete: Ingenuous investigators: Antonio Vallisneri's regional network and the making of natural knowledge in eighteenth-century Italy . In: Paula Findlen (Ed.): Empires of knowledge - scientific networks in the early modern world. London; New York: Routledge 2019 ISBN 978-1-138-20712-7 , pp. 181-204.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Francesco Trevisani: Antonio Vallisnieri , In: Wolfgang U. Eckart and Christoph Gradmann (eds.): Ärztelexikon. From antiquity to the present , 1st edition 1995, CH Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung Munich, p. 360; 2nd edition 2001, p. 314; 3rd edition 2006, Springer Verlag Heidelberg, Berlin, New York, p. 327. Ärztelexikon 2006 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-540-29585-3 .
2. ↑ Member entry of Antonio Vallisnieri at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on May 6, 2017.
3. ↑ Available online under CC-BY-NC-SA-3.0 license: http://www.edition-open-sources.org/sources/9/index.html , accessed on November 12, 2018.

Web links

• Website of the University of Padua about his natural history cabinet