Fabrizio Baldassarri From the Analogy with Animals to the Anatomy of Plants in Medicine: The Physiology of Living Processes from Harvey to Malpighi The anatomy of plants is so diffuse a subject and so recondite that it demands enormous labor and great patience. I might therefore spend the rest of my life pursuing it. (Malpighi to Oldenburg, 23 rd July 1672.) Introduction Throughout the ages, the analogy between vegetal and animal forms has importantly shaped medical knowledge. While an anthropomorphic understanding of plants devel- oped in the Greek philosophers Plato (428/427 or 424/423–348/347 B.C.) and Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), 1 the knowledge of resemblances and analogies between plants and ani- mals flourished in diverse frameworks and contexts, especially characterizing the medi- cal understanding of a few animal processes, namely the basic activities of nutrition, growth, and reproduction. Still, since scholars primarily devoted their attention to the animal world, this analogy appeared engulfed in the effort of anthropomorphising plants, revealing a restricted focus and generally resulting in absurdities and monstrosities. 2 In contrast to this, it is especially with the anatomical studies of vegetation performed by Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712) and Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694) that the science of plants surfaced and helped shape a new approach in early modern medicine. Besides the metaphorical uses in Plato and the Platonic strand, the attempts to uncover analogies between plants and animals characterized the medical knowledge that goes back to Hippocrates (ca. 460–between 375 and 351 B.C.), Aristotle, and Galen Note: Research for this article has been carried out with the support by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation (CNCS-UEFISCDI), project number PN-III-P1-1.1-PD-2016–1496 and has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodovska-Curie grant agreement No 890770, “VegSciLif”. I presented part of this work at Ca’ Foscari Venice, at HSS Annual Conference 2018 in Seattle, and at HSS Annual Conference 2019 in Utrecht in a panel I co-organized with Alain Touwaide. I would like to thank the participants of these meetings for their questions and comments.  Repici 2000. See also the contributions in Baldassarri and Blank 2021.  Brancher 2015. See, for example, Aldrovandi, Dendrologiae (ed. Ovidis Montalbani, 1668): 3–6. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110739930-007