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The concept ’Qi’ has been widely used in various fields such as philosophy, literature, religion, and traditional medicine in Eastern World Yet, its meaning is not clearly defined, and its scientific relevance is not understood at all. In 1960’s Bonghan Kim’s team found that some liquid flowed in the BongHan(BH)duts that corresponded to the acupuncture meridians. This discovery suggested that Qi might be viewed as the liquid , signal, and information that flowed in the BongHan ducts. In the last several years BongHan theory has been revived through the research to find the anatomical structure corresponding to the acupuncture meridians. In this study we injected a mixed liquid of Alcian blue and barberry-root extract into the femoral vein of a rat and found appearance of blue spots along some blood vessels in skin, internal organs, and especially in thymus. We also observed ’organ-surface BH-duct and corpuscles’ that became blue by the circulation of the injected liquid. The lines of stained cells appeared in the fatty tissue or around blood vessels, and they were highly concentrated at and around acupuncture points. The specimens were examined by using phase contrast microscope and some of them were studied by H&E staining. According to classical literatures the terminologis Qi and Blood were often used together as ’Qi-Blood’. We hypothesized that Qi flow is pertinent to the BH-ducts and the BH-ducts and blood vessels form a bundle structure as two independent circulation systems. Our finding of the line of blue stained spots along the BH-duct is consistent with traditional ’Gi-blood’ terminology, and our hypothesis.
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