Background
Caldani was born on November 21, 1725, in Bologna, Italy.
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1757
Caldani was born on November 21, 1725, in Bologna, Italy.
Caldani completed his education in his native Bologna, receiving the Ph.D. and Doctor of Medicine degree on October 12, 1750.
While working as professor in Bologna, Caldani was concerned mainly with his own animal experiments, which were designed to verify and amplify Halier’s findings. In connection with these experiments he first used an electric current to stimulate muscle tissue. His first publication, a report on seventy-three new experiments, was read at the end of 1756 to the Istituto delle Scienze in Bologna; it met with Haller’s approval but encountered stiff opposition from some of Caldani’s colleagues. Discouraged by the disputes that resulted, Caldani thought of leaving Bologna. He decided to remain, however, partly in consequence of Haller’s warning that to move abroad might entail his conversion - a prospect from which, as a devout Catholic, Caldani shrank.
To improve his knowledge of anatomy, Caldani spent the first months of 1758 in Padua with Morgagni, whom he hoped to succeed. It was somewhat unwillingly, though, that he returned to Bologna and resumed his advocacy of Haller’s teachings. Grateful for this support, Haller arranged Caldani’s election to membership in the Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften in Gottingen in 1759 and later sponsored him for membership in the Royal Society of London. In the fall of 1759 Caldani, following the schedule of rotation, took over the anatomical demonstrations in Bologna; these were followed in the early part of 1760 by public anatomical disputations. In these disputations Caldani certainly had the scientific capability to defend himself against the attacks of Paolo Balbi and Tommaso Laghi, severe though they were. Nevertheless, he resigned from his teaching position and, although his means were slender, left his home for Venice.
He had to wait until the summer of 1764 to be appointed at Padua as professor of theoretical medicine, specifically of Boerhaave’s theory. He alternately lectured on pathology and physiology; and from the beginning of 1773 he lectured on anatomy as well. Caldani was confirmed as Morgagni’s successor in the chair of anatomy at Padua by the Venetian senate on 11 November 1773. He prepared his lectures for the three books called Institutiones - the Institutiones physiologiae was often reprinted - which were written in the style of Haller; they were widely read because several universities introduced them as textbooks. Most of Caldani’s later writings are more medical than biological. Toward the end of his life he published, with his nephew Floriano Caldani, a collection of anatomical drawings, some of which were made from their own preparations and some of which were drawings by others. He did not relinquish his professorial chair in Padua until 1805, when advanced age made it necessary to do so.
