Mucus as an anatomical entity has been unjustly overlooked in bioscience, despite being recognised as an influential microenvironment for cells or hosts with disease-causing properties. In addition to his description of cell function, Rudolf Virchow considered the effect of mucus, to which we owe today’s thinking on cell biology.
He coined the term ‘Schleimgewebe’. These spaces of mucus, formed by ‘connective tissue’ (wrongly ‘fasciae’, formerly described as ‘tela’), can be revealed without cells by Ott’s method. The fact that correct cells redevelop locally through blood perfusion in determined spaces is further evidence of local effectiveness of Schleimgewebe.
As further evidence for a mucus topology, we can conclude that topological thinking is clinically very successful in cancer treatment.