Cardio-vascular diseases since Harvey's discovery : the Harveian oration, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London on 18 October 1928 / by Humphry Davy Rolleston.

  • Humphry Rolleston
Date:
1928
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Cardio-vascular diseases since Harvey's discovery : the Harveian oration, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London on 18 October 1928 / by Humphry Davy Rolleston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    presence of red blood cells as early as 1658, but his observation was not made public until 1738 when Boerhaave brought out Swammerdam’s Biblia Naturae. Luciani gives the credit of first seeing with a microscope the red corpuscles in the capillaries of a living animal (an embryo chick) to Lazzaro Spal¬ lanzani in 1771. After the discovery of the capillaries there was a long interval before this most essential part of the circulatory system received due attention. Thomas Young in 1808 had the foresight to assume as prob¬ able variation in the size of the capillaries. Poi- seuille in 1834 noticed the central core of red cells and the peripheral layer of plasma with the more slowly moving leucocytes. The view that the capil¬ lary circulation was a mere passive communication between the arterioles and the venules was definitely modified by Strieker’s observation in 1865 that the capillaries became constricted from swelling of the endothelial cells. In 1873 Rouget observed on the surface of capillaries the cells which bear his name, and described their contraction; this was confirmed by Vimtrup and by Krogh; but Aschoff and Ohno disputed this and regarded them as adventitial cells, a view endorsed by Clark and Clark, who observed contraction of the capillary endothelium both before the Rouget cells appear and in areas devoid of Rouget cells when these have developed. In 1879 Roy and
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