The Microcirculation.
Beyond William Harvey Volume One.
Description:... The presently accepted model of the circulation is based on the work of Dr. William Harvey in the 17th century. But what Dr. Harvey described was what we now call the Macrocirculation, this is, the heart, lungs, arteries, and veins. The technology at the time did not permit a study of the capillaries, the interstitial fluid, and the lymphatic system. How did oxygen and other molecules traveled from the capillary lumen to the parenchymal cells was not known.
A lot of scientific knowledge has been acquired since Dr. Harvey's description. Dr. Marcello Malpighi, and Italian physician and biologist, visualized and discovered the capillaries also in the 17th Century. Claude Bernard, a French physiologist introduced the concept of the internal environment in the 19th Century, and physiologist Adolf Fick first reported a law governing mass transport through diffusive means in 1855.
There was knowledge about the Lymphatic System for many years but only recently we have come to understand that it is a part of the microcirculation and the main avenue to drain cellular waste products from the cells to the circulation and out to the external environment.
We can now clearly divide the circulation into a macrocirculation and a microcirculation. The former comprises the heart, lungs, arteries, and veins and has been described in detail in many volumes. The purpose of this book is to describe the microcirculation, composed of capillaries, venules, the interstitial space (the internal environment), and the lymphatic system. And to describe how important molecules travel from the capillary lumen, to the interstitial space, to the parenchymal cells, to the lymphatic system, and to the macrocirculation, to finally be expelled, in a modified form, into the external environment, which is the world we live in.
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