Discovery of Thoracic Duct

In 1647 Jean Pecquet (1622-1674) discovered the thoracic duct while working on animal dissection. He was an anatomist of Paris at that time.

Pecquet was born in Dieppe, France and studied medicine in Paris and Montpelier. Pecquet reported in his findings in ‘Experiment nova anatomica’ in 1651.

The year after that Johannes Van Horne, a Dutch Professor who joined the medical faculty at Leiden published an account of the same organ. He himself independently discovered the thoracic duct and first observed it in the human body.

The duct is connected to the lymph system and connects the vessels and organs that transmit nutrients and oxygen to the tissues of the body and carries away waste matter from the tissue.

It was later determined that the thoracic system carries lymph, which is the waste fluid, and chyle, the fluid containing nutrients from the digestion of food, to and from the intestinal system into the cardiovascular system.

Although Eustachius had given some hints of the existence of a thoracic duct, yet Pecquet deserves the credit of having traced the whole course of the lacteal system to its termination on the subclavian veins.
Discovery of Thoracic Duct