Lorenzo Bellini

Background

Lorenzo Bellini was born on September 3, 1643, in Florence, Italy. He was born to a family of small businessmen, benefited from the patronage of Duke Ferdinand II of Tuscany from his early youth.

Education

Under the protection of Duke Ferdinand II of Tuscany, Lorenzo Bellini attended the University of Pisa, where he studied philosophy and mathematics with some of Italy’s leading scientists, most notably Giovanni Alfonso Borelli.

Career

At the precocious age of twenty, Bellini was appointed professor of theoretical medicine at Pisa, and with Duke Ferdinand’s assistance he acquired a chair of anatomy five years later. He resigned the chair when he was about fifty, to become first physician to Duke Cosimo III of Tuscany.

His earliest interests were anatomy and physiology. The first essay he published, Exercitatio anatomica de usu renum (1662), was an important study of the structure and function of the kidneys. Until Bellini’s time, the kidneys were widely understood in terms laid down by Galen. Said to be composed of a dense, undifferentiated “parenchymatous” material, they were thought to form urine through the exercise of a special “faculty” that controlled the selective secretion of urine from the mass of the incurrent blood.

In 1665 he published an essay on taste, Gustus organum, which included sections on the functional anatomy of the tongue. The intention of this work, however, was mainly to account for the general phenomena of gustatory sensation according to corpuscular principles. For years afterward, Bellini published no other serious anatomical work, although he did maintain active friendships with Francesco Redi and, after 1676, with Malpighi.

He kept abreast of scientific developments through his contacts and correspondence, and in 1683 he returned to print with De urinis et pulsibus el missione sanguinis, the first important attempt by an Italian systematically to apply the mechanical philosophy to medical theory.

In De urinis, Bellini seems to have been inspired by two earlier authors: the English physician and corpuscular philosopher Thomas Willis, whose medical works were published on the Continent in the early 1680’s, and Bellini’s old mentor Borelli, whose De motu animalium appeared posthumously in 1680.

First reactions to Bellini’s hydraulic latromechanism were uncertain. A few scattered admirers, such as Bohn in Germany and Baglivi in Italy, communicated their enthusiasm, but otherwise the De urinis seems to have made little real impact. Bellini turned seriously to medical practice, and in his letters he consoled Malpighi with the news that he too had many enemies and critics. But in 1692 Bellini’s affairs took a dramatic turn for the better. The Scots mathematician and physician Archibald Pitcairne, then lecturer on theoretical medicine at Leiden, wrote to express his admiration. Pitcairne was then trying to construct a mathematical and “Newtonian” medical theory, and he saw in Bellini’s work an example of the “methods of the Geometers” applied to medical problems. Pitcairne praised Bellini’s general theory of disease and urged him to develop further some of the ideas contained only in compressed form in the De urinis.

Bellini reacted favorably to Pitcairne’s encouragement; and he devoted the next few years to his last set of essays, which he dedicated to Pitcairne and published in 1695 as Opuscula aliquot. The Opuscula developed Bellini’s earlier latromechanical themes most fully. Organized into postulates, theorems, and corollaries, it treats problems ranging from the hydraulics of intrauterine and extrauterine circulation to the mechanics of the “contractile villi.”

By the time the Opuscula was published, Bellini had already begun to enjoy an international reputation, largely through the influence of Pitcairne. During the early decades of the eighteenth century, that reputation spread. Hermann Boerhaave, the most influential medical teacher of the time, studied with Pitcairne at Leiden and absorbed his enthusiasm for Bellini’s medical science.

Achievements

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  Bellini's major achievement was in becoming a pioneer in applying mechanical philosophy to the explanation of the functions of the human body. He was considered a founder of Italian latromechanism. Bellini described the collecting tubules of the kidney, known as Bellini’s ducts (tubules). His essay that he published in 1662, Exercitatio anatomica de usu renum, was an important study of the structure and function of the kidneys. He also described the taste organs (1665) and stressed the value of urinalysis as an aid to diagnosis (1683).
  
  Also, another Bellinis's achievement was in becoming the first physician to Duke Cosimo III of Tuscany. Bellini remained a major scientific authority until the mid-eighteenth century, when a general reaction to latromechanism.

Works

More photos

• book

  • La Bucchereide del Dottor Lorenzo Bellini 1729
  • L'anatomia patologica di Lorenzo Bellini 1662
  • De Urinis Et Pulsibus: De Missione Sanguinis, De Febribus, De Morbis Capitis, Et Pectoris 1698
  • Opuscula Aliquot Ad Archibaldum Pitcarnium Professorem Lugduno-Batavum 1696
  • A mechanical account of fevers 1720
  • Florentini Exercitationes Anatomicae Duae De Structura Et Usu Renum Ut Et De Gustus Organo Novissime Deprehenso 1700

Views

Bellini sympathized with the corpuscular philosopher Thomas Willis' theories but felt that he had introduced too many unnecessary and ad hoc assumptions. Willis supposed, for example, that a “fermentation” of the blood’s constituent particles was required to explain such diseases as fevers. By contrast, Bellini, under Borelli’s influence, preferred to think of the blood as a physical fluid with such simple mechanical and mathematicizable attributes as density, viscosity, and momentum.

He postulated that health consisted of a well-ordered circulation and that disease implied some sort of circulatory imbalance or inefficiency. Thus, to arrive at the proper theory for a particular disease, one needed merely to set out the pathological phenomena and then to deduce them as consequences of increased or diminished velocity of the blood. In this manner, Bellini thought, one could get beyond Willis’ tentative hypotheses to the real and “necessary” mechanical causes of fevers. He, therefore, substituted a hydraulic latromechanism for a corpuscular one.

Both Willis and Borelli had tried, to some extent, to apply the mechanical philosophy to medical theory. Willis, in particular, had attempted to formulate corpuscular hypotheses, both to account for disease phenomena and to justify such traditional therapeutic methods as bleeding, purging, and vomiting.

But under the influence of the mechanical philosophy he learned from Borelli, Bellini rejected this Galenic theory as absurd. He sought a less verbal and more mechanical explanation, and when he reexamined renal anatomy in this frame of mind, he discovered in the supposedly unorganized parenchyma a complicated structure composed of fibers, open spaces, and densely packed tubules opening into the pelvis of the kidney. This unsuspected structure provided the key to true renal function.

Bellini posited that arterial blood brought into the kidneys is separated into urinous and sanguineous portions by a sievelike arrangement in the renal vessels and fibers; the urinous portion collected in the urinary tubules and the blood returned to the circulatory stream through the venules. He meant this mechanical explanation of urinary secretion, achieved by the “configuration alone” of the renal vessels, as a general substitute for Galen’s incomprehensible “faculties.”

Bellini’s mechanical manner of physiological explanation won the admiration of contemporary scientists in Italy and abroad, and his anatomical discoveries were considered worthy enough in themselves to merit careful scrutiny by, among others, Marcello Malpighi.

Connections

employer:

Cosimo III of Tuscany

Cosimo III de' Medici (14 August 1642 – 31 October 1723) was the penultimate (sixth) Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany.

associate:

Thomas Willis

Thomas Willis (27 January 1621 – 11 November 1675) was an English doctor who played an important part in the history of anatomy, neurology, and psychiatry. He was a founding member of the Royal Society.

associate:

Georgius Baglivus

Bellini’s influence was somewhat tempered in Italy by the Hippocratic revival encouraged by Giorgio Baglivi, who had once been Bellini’s ardent admirer.

References

• Lorenzo Bellini
  1992
• Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  1970