725. Malpighi, an Italian, who flourished at Bologna in the middle of the 17th century, was the first to establish a special inquiry into the intimate structure of the secreting apparatus. After many years of laborious examination he arrived at the conclusion that a minute sac or follicle is invariably interposed between the termination of the capillary artery and the commencement of the excretory duct. According to him, the capillary artery conveys the blood to the follicle, separates from the blood the substance secreted, and the excretory duct arising from one extremity of the follicle conveys the secreted fluid, when duly prepared, to its destined situation. By injection, by dissection, by the microscope, by experiment on living animals, and by the phenomena of disease, he conceived that he had demonstrated that this is the true structure of the secreting apparatus in its most complex form. This view was generally acquiesced in by his contemporaries and by succeeding anatomists and physiologists; and in the time when Ruysh wrote was the received opinion. 726. Ruysh, who flourished at Amsterdam, and was contemporary with Malpighi, but a younger man, and who published on the glands about twenty years after Malpighi, according to the account of Haller, “employed wonderful patience, with the assistance of his daughters, in rendering all his preparations elegant and beautiful, being equally skilled in the methods of softening, hardening, filling, and drying.” Of Ruysh it was said that while others, in their anatomical preparations, merely exhibited the horrid features of death, he preserved the human body in all the freshness of life, even to the expression of the features. The fineness of his injections, the dexterity with which he unfolded the minute vessels, nerves, and absorbents, and exhibited their combinations and relations in the most delicate structures, the skill with which he preserved his preparations in transparent fluids, and the elegance with which he displayed them in their natural forms and folds, excited universal admiration; and philosophers, statesmen, princes, kings, all the learned and noble of the day, crowded to his museum. 727. By his superior method of injecting, Ruysh conceived that he was able completely to disprove Malpighi’s doctrine. He maintained that the bodies which Malpighi mistook for sacs or follicles are in reality convoluted vessels; that these vessels are capable of being completely unravelled; that, when unfolded, their continuity with the excretory duct is perfectly demonstrated; that secretion is performed by the capillary artery itself, without the intervention of any other organ; and that when the secreted substance is duly prepared, it is poured by the capillary directly into the excretory duct.