Esperienze intorno alia generazione delle zanzare ... scritte in una lettera all' ... Francesco Redi.
Florence: V. Vangelisti, 1679. First edition, extremely rare, author’s presentation copy, of Sangallo’s Experiments concerning the generation of mosquitoes. A young student of Francesco Redi, Sangallo defends the theory of his master expressed in his Experiments concerning the generation of insects (1668) against the supporters of spontaneous generation. Referred to as the “founder of experimental biology”, Redi (1626-97) “read in the book on generation by William Harvey, a speculation that vermin such as insects, worms, and frogs do not arise spontaneously, as was then commonly believed, but from seeds or eggs too small to be seen. In 1668, in one of the first examples of a biological experiment with proper controls, Redi set up a series of flasks containing different meats, half of the flasks sealed, half open. He then repeated the experiment but, instead of sealing the flasks, covered half of them with gauze so that air could enter. Although the meat in all of the flasks putrefied, he found that only in the open and uncovered flasks, which flies had entered freely, did the meat contain maggots … correctly concluding that the maggots came from eggs laid on the meat by flies” (Britannica). “Redi’s experiments are notable for many reasons, not least because they were among the first to utilize a set of controls (i.e., the set of sealed flasks) for verifying the conclusions. The account appeared in Redi's Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl'insetti (1668)” (Linda Hall). “Written in the form of a letter addressed to Redi, the Esperienze provide a detailed account of an experiment – which began on June 20 and continued until mid-August 1679 – aimed at confirming, in relation to the case of mosquitoes, the method of parental generation demonstrated just over a decade earlier by the master for other species of insects.The methodology faithfully follows that implemented by Redi: two vases were filled with stagnant water taken from the nurseries of Poggio Imperiale – ‘to the height of six transverse fingers’, one of which was left ‘open to the free air in my house’, while the other ‘with its mouth tightly closed’ (p. 7). Mosquitoes began to circulate around the open jar and only four days after the beginning of the experiment (June 24) Sangallo was able to observe inside it ‘some worms so small and minute that they barely fell under the eye, nor could their shape be distinguished [...].In the closed jar – he noted – up to now no worm has ever been born’ (p. 8) … In the following days it was possible to witness their progressive growth and differentiation, described and depicted – in the phases that today we identify as the larval and pupal stages – in the plate accompanying the text, drawn – it should be noted – using the magnification allowed by ‘a poor microscope with a single lens’ (p. 9).Between 1 and 6 August the transformation was finally complete and all the ‘replicated’ and «reiterated’ experiments that followed demonstrated with absolute certainty that the worms from which the mosquitoes developed were not at all the fruit of putrid and stagnant water but of ‘seeds, or eggs born in water, since such little animals were never born in closed water’ (p. 14).The work concluded with a review of the methods adopted in various eras and in various places to keep these annoying creatures away, ‘against which a good protection seems to me’ – concludes Sangallo with a hint of irony – ‘the only and unique one, that was found only by the fishermen of Egypt, that is to say a good mosquito net, that perfectly surrounds the bed, and in our times is made of the finest Bologna veil’ (p. 20)” (Treccani, our translation). OCLC lists Yale only. KVK adds NLM, two copies in Germany, and three in Italy. RBH lists a single copy (in 1988). Provenance: Manuscript dedication by the author at foot of title. Title with two old library stamps. “On a June evening in 1679, a group of Florentine philosophy students were walking around the foundations of the Basilica of Santa Maria del Fiore, discussing scientific topics in a friendly manner, until some mosquitoes buzzing around attracted their attention.The youngest of them was Pietro Paolo da Sangallo, all of them were students and friends of Francesco Redi (Arezzo, February 18, 1626; Pisa, March 1, 1697), a very well-known figure in the Florence of the time, an academician of the Crusca, an academician of the Cimento, a professor at the University of Pisa, and a grand-ducal physician, first for Ferdinando II de’ Medici and then for Cosimo III.Precisely that Ferdinand II who had been the founder of the Cimento (1657) and, with his brother Leopoldo, the protector and one of the most active members until this academy remained alive and then fell silent, after 1667, coinciding with the election of Leopoldo as Cardinal with consequent call to Rome. “Redi, just one year after the end of the Cimento, managed to print his volume Experiences on the generation of insects, in the form of a letter to Carlo Dati (Florence, 1668), at the Insegna della Stella, calling himself, on the frontispiece, Academician of the Crusca, without mentioning the Cimento.This work went through a large number of reprints, five in Florence by 1688, and one, in Latin, in Amsterdam in 1671. With these experiments, Redi demonstrated the erroneousness of the beliefs on spontaneous generation, arguing with the official opinion of the Church, supported by the Jesuits Fr.Athanasius Kircher and Fr.Filippo Buonanni.And it seemed that the Vatican, long annoyed by Redi’s innovative positions, could find nothing better than to give the purple to Leopold, calling him to Rome and silencing the Cimento. “At the time when the group of students discussed Mosquitoes as we mentioned above, Redi was still their recognized master and spiritual leader, he had already published the Esperienze, and had many well-known students, who dedicated their works to him, among them Lorenzo Bellini, Giuseppe Del Papa, who later succeeded him as grand-ducal archiater and professor in Pisa, then Giovanni Caldesi, a scholar of turtles, and then Pietro Paolo da Sangallo who dedicated himself to Mosquitoes. “After the end of the Cimento, Da Sangallo gave proof of its collaborative spirit, recounting in a letter to Redi how he had undertaken his studies on Mosquitoes, which had been entrusted to him by his night owl friends on that famous June evening in Piazza del Duomo. “At this point it might seem too simple and hasty to say that the Cimento had disappeared in 1668 with the emigration of Leopoldo de’ Medici.In reality, the young people continued to meet and gave life to new research.All this was attested to on this occasion by Pietro Paolo da Sangallo, who had carefully studied Redi’s Experiments on the reproduction of Flies, Midges, Mosquitoes, Grasshoppers, Butterflies, Mites, Scorpions, Spiders, and finally, continuing the eternal controversy with Father Athanasius Kircher, on the generation of Frogs and Vipers.Redi, among other things, had discovered that all these animals lay their eggs in suitable environments and from these come out worm-like animals from which, with some transformation, adults identical to those that had given birth to the eggs emerge.Ten years later, da Sangallo devotes himself in particular to Mosquitoes and raises them in special well-closed glass containers, thus beginning, on 20 June 1679, his experiments which he carries out in the stagnant water of the nurseries cultivated at the beginning of the road that leads to Poggio Imperiale.He is inspired by the research that Redi had conducted on Flies and here he raises Mosquitoes.Of these he recognizes different species or varieties (like Redi, he used the microscope), and portrays in good drawings all the salient moments of the metamorphosis, and the various stages of life of which he demonstrates the necessary development in water. “All this is the subject of a report in the form of a letter, in Italian, dedicated to the illustrious Mr. Francesco Redi and printed in Florence by Vincenzo Vangelisti Stampatore Arcivescovale on 4 November 1679. The work is rich in illustrations that portray the different phases of the biological cycle, and the two main forms of adults.One of them (fig. 5) somewhat resembles (not entirely) the adult Mosquito, depicted 10 years earlier by Francesco Redi in his Esperienze (Plate 29).Moreover, da Sangallo echoes in many other points the masterpiece of his Master.He also quotes and reports the Arab naturalist Alchazuino (Dr. Zaccaria Ben Muhammed Ibn Mahmud) who also described the Mosquito, comparing it to an elephant with wings. “Da Sangallo concludes his work in this way: ‘To free oneself from such a nuisance of Mosquitoes, many and different medicinal measures are taught by various authors.Pliny praises anointing oneself every evening with oil of wormwood, and Emilio Macro, or whoever is the author of those verses, which wander under the name of Macro, does not knowing by chance that even mosquitoes do not abhor wine, he praises bathing oneself completely in wine, provided that wormwood has been infused and boiled in it. Some others teach that one should plaster one's face, hands, and arms with saliva after having chewed cumin well, and then mix it with strong, smoky white wine and sprinkle it with it the windows, the doors, and the whole house, and this work for greater ministry should be done with leafy, green twigs.The author of the book of Simple Medicines to Paternianus attributed to Galen, wants one to use the juice of the fruits of the Tamarisk, or their decoction made in water.Others praise bathing the head and the whole body with boiling Rue, or Nigella, or Coniza, adding to it for greater efficacy a good quantity of vitriol, and juniper coals, which I imagine makes a beautiful sight.There are those who propose to daub oneself every evening from head to toe at bedtime with a certain mixture made of oil, vinegar, and crushed sage, and if anyone does not like sage, there are those who put incense powder in its place.Those Greeks who wrote about agriculture approve of the usefulness of surrounding the bed with a garland made of hemp leaves sprinkled with water, and a certain worthy man proposes that sponges soaked in strong vinegar should be kept near the head and under the soles of the feet, and that a similar sponge should be attached to the top of the house. And what seems to me most remarkable, or rather ridiculous, is that, wanting to know the reason why such a sponge attached to the top of the house is useful, he says that all the mosquitoes will run to flutter around that sponge attached up there, and he does not realize that if this is true they will also fly around the head and feet of the person who has put such a delicious idea into action.Some, resorting to the sympathy, or antipathy of things, or better to superstition, write that sticking a horse-hair in the middle of the house is an infallible remedy against the buzzing, and against the bites of mosquitoes and perhaps they believe that it is true that Apollonius Tyanaeus with his incantations operated (as Tzeze tells) that mosquitoes never entered the cities of Antioch and Constantinople alive.The fumigations, which for this purpose are proposed by the authors are so many, and so many, that I for my part believe that so many did not know about them, and did not put them into practice, the Magician Ismeno, and the Fairies of Boiardo and Ariosto.All these snares, although held to be true by the credulous masses, are totally useless, and annoying, and more troublesome than the Mosquitoes themselves, against which a good protection seems to me to be the only and unique one, which was found in ancient times by the fishermen of Egypt, that is to say a good Mosquito Net, which perfectly surrounds the bed, and in our times is made of the finest Bologna veil, and therefore speaking more of such remedies’ … “But Pietro Paolo da Sangallo, after having printed some of the most interesting and entertaining pages of post-Cimento entomological literature, in which he appears to be deeply imbued with the collaborative spirit of the Florentine Academy, and to have clarified several fundamental points of the Biology of Mosquitoes, disappears from the scene, and no one speaks of him anymore, except for Abbot Salvino Salvini, an illustrious Arcadian who in the obituary written in 1699 on Redi's death cites the dedication to Redi of the famous letter on Mosquitoes that da Sangallo had printed in Florence in 1679. Already before Salvini, on 14 October 1690, Redi himself in one of his letters to Dr. Giuseppe Lanzoni1, expressed himself as follows: ‘It was a miracle that I found one of those letters by Pietro Paolo da Sangallo, written to me about the Generation of Mosquitoes.If anyone wanted to pay 100 ducats for it, I do not believe that another could be found, because as Your Excellency will be able to see, it has been printed for a long time, and this Doctor died shortly after it was printed.The virtuous genius of Your Excellency, and so well deserving of good philosophy, has been the reason that I have been able to find it.I am therefore sending it to you included in this letter as you have commanded me’.Pietro Paolo da Sangallo must have died in the very early 80s of the century.But he was a boy, the youngest of the last followers of Cimento, as he describes himself, even if he was a Doctor, as Redi defines him.And no one has ever made any mention in writing of his life, with the exception of his Master” (Baccetti & Nannelli, pp. 9-14, our translation). “We have very little information about [Sangallo]: we do not know when he was born – presumably in Florence, around the middle of the 17th century – nor who his parents were. He certainly studied medicine in Pisa where he had as his teacher the Empoli doctor Giuseppe Del Papa (1648-1735), a lecturer at that University starting in 1677, graduating in 1679. It was precisely through the intermediation of Del Papa, a great admirer of the brilliant student's abilities, that Sangallo came into contact, after completing his studies, with Francesco Redi. The correspondence between Redi and Del Papa provides important information that allows us to place Sangallo, in the wake of Del Papa, in the party of the novatores within the harsh clash with the supporters of tradition that inflamed the University of Pisa in those years.Four of the propositions planned for the Conclusions, printed in Bologna and now lost, which Sangallo was supposed to discuss publicly, as was customary after obtaining a doctorate, in fact fell foul of censorship, arousing the indignation of Marcello Malpighi. After graduating, Sangallo continued his education under the protection and teaching of the grand ducal archiater: the very title of the only work printed in Florence in November 1679, the Esperienze intorno alla generazione delle zanzare, could not make more evident – in addition to what the author constantly declared – the line of continuity with Redian Esperienze intorno alla generazione degli insetti” (Treccani). The copy reproduced in Baccetti & Nannelli, and that listed on RBH, have a frontispiece portrait of Redi, not present in our copy. Baccetti & Nannelli (eds.), Prime Esperienze sulla Generazione delle Zanzare, 2007.
4to (257 x 182 mm), pp. 21 with one plate (title with some foxing). Original boards with marbled paper spine, uncut.
Item #6271
Price: $5,000.00
