A HISTORY OF THE KIVERIS
VEIN
"Now Nature conducted arteries and veins to all the [other] parts
over the shortest interval, as I have said, and only the testes and breasts
did she bring then not from vessels nearby but from those at a distance...
for both milk and semen are generated from perfectly concocted blood. It
is the length of time which blood spends in the vessel conducting it that
permits the perfect concoction of these, and of necessity blood spends more
time in longer vessels and the longer vessels are always those that come
from a distance. Properly, then, Nature brings blood and pneuma to the testes
and breasts not from vessels nearby, but from those that have traversed
a very long interval." -- Galen, 2nd century A. D.
One of the most interesting
problems of the female body concerned the process by which breast milk appeared
and disappeared. The answer, as Galen suggests above, lay in the idea of
the "female vein," which connected the breasts to the female
reproductive organs. Paraphrasing Galen, the twelfth-century Jewish
philosopher Moses Maimonides wrote, "Since the breasts and the uterus were
created to perform the same function, they have common arteries and veins."
The
strength of this idea made it a commonly accepted feature of the female body
well into the sixteenth century. At the end of the fifteenth century,
Leonardo da Vinci's words could easily have come from the mouth of Galen (as
they probably did): "Both veins and arteries go from nearby places to bring food to
their members, with the exception of the veins and arteries of the testes
and breasts which come to these from afar off so that the blood may delay
a long time within them. Thus the blood is better digested and more easily
converted into good sperm and into milk." Look closely at Leonardo's
drawing of the female body to the left. Can you see the kiveris vein?
Leonardo's contemporary, Jacopo
Berengario da Carpi tried to provide a more specific description of the actual
path of this vein, when he wrote:
"[The] bifurcated arteries and veins, one at the right, the other
at the left descending are according to some divided on each side into ten
parts... [One] goes to the long muscles of the abdomen. The branches of
this one in ascending are joined with the viens of the chest descending
toward these branches. United with these chest veins they go to the breasts.
From this branch notable parts go to the uterus, from which two veins not
associated with arteries ascend through the abdomen to the breasts. Through
these veins the abdomen is joined to the uterus. Therefore in pregnancy
and in the time of retention of menstruation beyond what is natural, the
breasts may swell as much as possible."
The more anatomists tried to
find the female vein, the more metaphorically and less physical it seemed.
Increasingly lactation became less specifically associated with a "female
vein." Andreas Vesalius in his Epitome (1543), published in
the same year as On the Fabric of the Human Body, described how the
breast "by an innate force, converts the blood brought to them by the veins
into milk." He no longer spoke of a specific conduit. In the
late 1570s, the French physician Laurent Joubert scornfully dismissed the idea
of "common veins between the breasts and uterus, citing Vesalius as his
inspiration. By 1620, the Scottish physician John Moir informed his
students that the glands of the breast, more or less, had replaced the kiveris
vein, though he did not explain exactly how they "have the function of
attracting menstrual blood and changing it by virtue of heat into milk."
A hormonal understanding of the
body is a very modern idea indeed. Look to the right above at
another Leonardo drawing of female reproduction. How would you try to
explain -- and draw -- something that you could not see precisely but were sure
was there because you saw its
effects?
QUESTIONS: WHAT WAS THE
EXPLANATION FOR THE EXISTENCE OF THE KIVERIS VEIN? HOW WAS THE FORMATION
OF BREAST MILK EXPLAINED?
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Anatomy Home Page)
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the Body Home Page
Some Additional Readings
The
strength of this idea made it a commonly accepted feature of the female body
well into the sixteenth century. At the end of the fifteenth century,
Leonardo da Vinci's words could easily have come from the mouth of Galen (as
they probably did): "Both veins and arteries go from nearby places to bring food to
their members, with the exception of the veins and arteries of the testes
and breasts which come to these from afar off so that the blood may delay
a long time within them. Thus the blood is better digested and more easily
converted into good sperm and into milk." Look closely at Leonardo's
drawing of the female body to the left. Can you see the kiveris vein?