Bellini Canals

Introduction

In the world of anatomy and medicine, the name Giovanni Bellini is often found on the pages of textbooks and scientific works. This Italian anatomist, physiologist and surgeon is considered one of the founders of modern anatomy, and his ideas and research still serve as the basis for many scientific studies and medical education courses. One of Bellini's most famous and significant discoveries is his discovery and description of channels in muscles - vessels of intramuscular tissue, through which blood flows more slowly than through the normal vascular system and is capable of providing nutrition to the muscles in conditions of a significant decrease in blood supply. Hence his nickname “the father of the muscular canals,” which he named in his book “Treatise on the Canals.”

Bellini's tubules are small vessels, 2 to 8 mm long, inside the muscle that provide nutrition but slow down the flow of blood. Tubules play an important role in muscle function. For example, they allow muscles to continue working even when blood flow is suddenly reduced, allowing muscles to remain active in emergency situations. These channels also help transport fluids, minerals and oxygen throughout muscle tissue, creating an optimal environment for muscle function.

History of the discovery The first to draw attention to the existence of vessels inside muscle tissue in the 18th century was the Italian anatomist Alessandro Volterra. He conducted anatomical studies and described the channels inside muscle tissue, but his observations were not widespread. It was only almost a century later that more detailed study was carried out, which led to the discovery of Bellini's Canaliculi.

Bellini's canals However, 15 years after their opening, Bellini's canals became the object of criticism. In 1787, Scottish anatomist John Prospert Langlais argued that not only the presence of Bellini's canals, but also their shape, refutes the idea that the vessels within muscle tissue play an exclusively passive role. Lang le added that in some muscles the Belli canals may not be quite straight, in others they can be curled, and that their location and shape vary not only depending on the muscles, but even within the same muscle, between its different sections. And thus concludes that these channels are not a function of muscle mass. Similar objections were expressed by other scientists, for example, the French physician Charles Bonnet, and the prevailing opinion was that the existence of these canals was rather a fact of anatomy. On the other hand, the assertion that the Bellini canals play an active role found its adherents who believed that the functional role of these structures can go beyond the passive supply of blood to muscle mass, and, on the contrary, can have a direct effect on muscle activity. Thus, in particular, the founder of the passive-active approach to assessing the mechanisms of energy production of a muscle cell was the French scientist Ivan Bernet, who believed that a decrease in blood flow in the Bellini canals negatively affects the possibility of ATP formation in muscle cells. This point of view was shared by a number of other authors. This disagreement can be explained by the fact that the patterns of development of organs and systems that exist in nature do not imply