Gaspare Aselli

Gaspare Aselli was an Italian physician and anatomist from Cremona who lived from about 1581 to 1625. He took degrees in medicine, surgery and philosophy at the University of Pavia, practised in Milan, served as head surgeon to the Spanish forces in Italy from 1612 and became professor of anatomy and surgery at Pavia shortly before he died. He is remembered for the lacteal vessels. On 23 July 1622, while dissecting a living dog, he noticed white vessels filled with a milky fluid after digestion, recognised them as a distinct fourth kind of vessel beside arteries, veins and nerves, and traced them to the mesenteric glands, though he wrongly thought they ran on to the liver. His findings, published after his death as De lactibus sive lacteis venis in 1627, were among the first anatomical books printed with colour illustrations, and they weakened Galen's teaching that chyle travelled in the veins.