He is known for a set of experiments that he performed in the s. Wondering where the worms came from in some snake meat that he had left lying about, he carefully followed the worms through their entire life cycles, from worms to pupae to flies. He surmised that perhaps flies laid the eggs that produced the worms.
Then he placed the same delectable morsels in another set of flasks, which he left open to the air. Sure enough, the sealed flasks produced no worms, while the open flasks bred worms aplenty. People believed that maggots would just emerge from rotting meat. In the experiment Redi prepared three groups of jars, each with a pieces of meat inside them. One group of jars was covered with gauze, one group was left open, and one group was completely sealed.
In the group of jars that were left open, Redi found maggots on the meat. Redi noticed that in the jars that were completely sealed, there were no maggots. In the group of jars that were covered in gauze, he noticed that there were no maggots on the meat, but maggots did appear on top of the gauze. This experiment provided evidence which refuted the spontaneous generation theory.
He showed that maggots came from eggs laid by flies. This experiment was important as it was one of the first controlled experiments in history. Modern day scientific experiments require controls to eliminate the impact of other variables on the results of the experiment.
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Recently viewed 0 Save Search. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. He also distinguished earthworms from helminths like tapeworms, flukes, and roundworms. He possibly originated the use of the control, the basis of experimental design in modern biology.
A collection of his poems first published in Bacco in Toscana "Bacchus in Tuscany" is considered among the finest works of the 17th-century Italian poetry, and for which the Grand Duke Cosimo III gave him a medal of honor. His father was a renowned physician at Florence. After schooling with the Jesuits, he attended the University of Pisa from where he obtained his doctoral degrees in medicine and philosophy in , at the age of It is here that most of his academic works were achieved, which earned him membership in Accademia dei Lincei.
He was also a member of the Accademia del Cimento Academy of Experiment from to He died in his sleep on March 1, in Pisa and his remains were returned to Arezzo for interment.
In Redi wrote his first monumental work Osservazioni intorno alle vipere Observations about the vipers to his friend Lorenzo Magalotti, secretary of the Accademia del Cimento. In this he began to break the prevailing scientific myths which he called "unmasking of the untruths" such as vipers drink wine and shatter glasses, their venom is poisonous if swallowed, the head of dead viper is an antidote, the viper's venom is produced from the gallbladder, and so on. He performed a series of experiments on the effects of snakebites, and demonstrated that venom was poisonous only when it enters the bloodstream via a bite, and that the fang contains venom in the form of yellow fluid.
He even showed that by applying a tight ligature before the wound, the passage of venom into the heart could be prevented. Redi is best known for his series of experiments, published in as Esperienze Intorno alla Generazione degli Insetti Experiments on the Generation of Insects , which is regarded as his masterpiece and a milestone in the history of modern science.
The book is one of the first steps in refuting "spontaneous generation"—a theory also known as Aristotelian abiogenesis.
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