The new organ, he explained, was a thin layer of dense connective tissue throughout the body, sandwiched just under our skin and within the middle layer of every visceral organ.

I love stuff like this. It reminds me that no matter how much we learn, there’s always stuff we don’t know. There’s always another way to look at something.

The organ also made up all the fascia, or the thin mesh of tissue separating every muscle and all the tissue around every vein and artery, from largest to smallest. What initially seemed to be a solid, dense, connective tissue layer was actually a complex network of fluid-filled cavities that are strong and flexible, yet so tiny and undiscerning that they escaped the attention of the brightest scientific minds for generations.

Despite not ‘knowing’ about it, it’s likely that this organ is part of the reason why things like acupuncture work. So we didn’t know about it, but we sort of did.