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Concept
Internal environment
Summary
The internal environment (or milieu intérieur in French) was a concept developed by Claude Bernard, a French physiologist in the 19th century, to describe the interstitial fluid and its physiological capacity to ensure protective stability for the tissues and organs of multicellular organisms.
Claude Bernard used the French phrase milieu intérieur (internal environment in English) in several works from 1854 until his death in 1878. He most likely adopted it from the histologist Charles Robin, who had employed the phrase "milieu de l’intérieur" as a synonym for the ancient hippocratic idea of humors. Bernard was initially only concerned with the role of the blood but he later included that of the whole body in ensuring this internal stability. He summed up his idea as follows:
The fixity of the milieu supposes a perfection of the organism such that the external variations are at each instant compensated for and equilibrated.... All of the vital mechanisms, however varied they may be, have always one goal, to maintain the uniformity of the conditions of life in the internal environment.... The stability of the internal environment is the condition for the free and independent life.
Bernard's work regarding the internal environment of regulation was supported by work in Germany at the same time. While Rudolf Virchow placed the focus on the cell, others, such as Carl von Rokitansky (1804–1878) continued to study humoral pathology particularly the matter of microcirculation. Von Rokitansky suggested that illness originated in damage to this vital microcirculation or internal system of communication. Hans Eppinger Jr. (1879–1946), a professor of internal medicine in Vienna, further developed von Rokitansky's point of view and showed that every cell requires a suitable environment which he called the ground substance for successful microcirculation.
Official source
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