Background
Domenico Galeazzi was born on August 4, 1686, in Bologna, Italy.
Via Zamboni, 33, 40126 Bologna BO, Italy
Galeazzi graduated as a Doctor of Philosophy and Medicine in 1709.
anatomist educator physicist scientist
Domenico Galeazzi was born on August 4, 1686, in Bologna, Italy.
Domenico attended the University of Bologna and studied medicine with the physician Matteo Bazzani, who is supposed to have discovered the coloring of bones in animals fed with madder root. He learned anatomy in the atmosphere created by Antonio Maria Valsalva, who in 1705 was named professor of anatomy at Bologna. Galeazzi was graduated Doctor of Philosophy and Medicine in 1709 and took up science under the influence of Giacomo Bartolomeo Beccari, then professor of physics at Bologna.
After graduating Galeazzi was immediately appointed substitute lecturer in experimental physics. In 1734, when Beccari transferred to the chair of chemistry, Galeazzi succeeded him as professor of physics. His first published work in physics dealt with the construction of mercury thermometers.
In 1714 Galeazzi visited Paris, where he met Jacques Cassini, Louis Lémery, Malebranche, Réaumur, and other men of science and attended meetings of the Académie Royale des Sciences. During those meetings, he became interested in the debate between Claude Geoffroy and Lémery concerning the significance of microscopic iron particles in living organisms: Geoffroy contended that these particles were produced by the organism, while Lémery asserted that they had been assimilated. On his return to Bologna, Galeazzi conducted experiments and demonstrated through chemical analysis that the iron particles were assimilated by the organism. He then made a systematic study to discover the connection between the iron in living organisms and iron salts in the soil. Later, in 1746, Galeazzi first ascertained the presence of iron in human blood. His pupil Vincenzo Menghini detected whole hematic iron in erythrocytes.
In 1716 Galeazzi was appointed a professor of philosophy at Bologna, a post he held for forty years. In 1719 he made geological observations in the Emilian Apennines. Later, in entomology, he discovered the endophagous generation of the fly and the oviparous generation of a cochineal, Pulvinaria vitis. Galeazzi also had a successful medical practice and wrote on the use of Peruvian bark (cinchona), on jaundice, and on gallstones and kidney stones. He is remembered today primarily for his anatomical research.
Galeazzi began his anatomical work in 1711 when he observed corpora lutea in different stages of regression in pregnant women. But his most important anatomical discoveries were in the gastrointestinal system. He defined the positions of the three layers of muscle fibers in the stomach and described the peculiar arrangement of the superficial layer of longitudinal muscle fibers. He described two layers of muscle fibers in the small intestine: the interior circular and the external longitudinal. In the colon, he considered only the circular layer important, because the external layer of longitudinal fibers forms only three longitudinal bands.
In the mucous coat of the intestines, Galeazzi described the glands now called Lieberkühn’s glands. Johann Nathanael Lieberkühn described them in 1745. Galeazzi made his observations in 1725 and published them in 1731. In 1756 Galeazzi retired from teaching philosophy. After that, he took the chair of anatomy, which he held until his death.
In Galeazzi’s time the question was whether the villi of the small intestine were hollow siphons, spongy perforated papillae, or unperforated papillae. Galeazzi clarified the structure of the villus: it can be long and cylindrical or short and squat, but he denied the existence of any free lymphatic opening on its surface. Galeazzi discovered many minute pores not on the villi but between them, distributed over the entire intestinal surface. He concluded that a special sievelike membrane exists on the interior surface of the intestines and that each of these numerous pores is an opening of a glandular structure in the intestinal wall. Galeazzi also wrote that these glandular structures discharge a secretion into the intestinal cavity.