The Anatomy of the Blood Vessels of the Human Lung as Applied to Chest Radiology Parts I, II, and III

Abstract

Pulmonis substantia, caro est mollis, fungosa rara, levis, aerea ac vetut ex spumosa sanguine spumave sanguinea, concreta, multisque vasorum germinibus scatens. Vesalius 1543. Interest in the pulmonary circulatory system began with Harvey's scientific demonstration of the circulation of the blood (1616) and the publication of De Motu Cordis (1628). The next advance was the publishing at Bologna in 1661 of Malpighi's work De Pulmonibus. Thereafter, although medical scientific study of the lung was maintained, it was mostly concerned with the air passages to the neglect of the vascular, lymphatic, and nervous systems. Moreover, much of the published work was of a histological character despite the fact that the macroscopic anatomy of the lungs was imperfectly known. Many of the great anatomists studied the bronchial and vascular supply of the lungs, but dissection of a collapsible viscus was always a difficult and tedious task so that it was not until the use of injection masses became common during the latter half of the nineteenth century that detailed and exact knowledge of lung structure was obtained. Injection, maceration, and dissection methods were used by Giraldes, Thomas Addison, Mandl, Schulze, Rindfleisch, Stieda, and others. In 1880 Aeby published his text-book The Bronchial Tree in Mammals and in Man based on a summary of existing knowledge and the author's own careful work on the gross anatomy of the lungs.