1622
Aselli's milky veins
On 23 July 1622 in Milan, Gaspare Aselli, professor of anatomy at Pavia, opened a living dog that had just eaten, to show friends its nerves. In the mesentery he saw many fine white threads. He cut one and a milky fluid ran out. In a dog that had not eaten, the threads could not be seen.
Aselli's first plate: the milky veins, white, spread through the mesentery of a dog, from De lactibus sive lacteis venis, 1627, in a later reproductionWikimedia Commons, Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0 (The Lacteals from Aselli. Wellcome M0010426.jpg)
He named them venae lacteae, milky veins. Following Galen, he thought they carried the chyle to the liver to be made into blood. Aselli died before he could publish, and his book De lactibus sive lacteis venis appeared in Milan in 1627, with the first anatomical plates printed in colour.
A plate of Aselli's De lactibus sive lacteis venis, 1627, printed in colour: the white milky veins gather in the mesentery of a dog and run up towards the lobes of the liver at the top rightWikimedia Commons, Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0 (Gaspare Asellius, De lactibus sive lacteis venis Wellcome L0021944.jpg)
Sources
- Gaspare Aselli, De lactibus sive lacteis venis (Milan, 1627).
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