fatal, thus obscuring for nearly two centuries the view of a 'self-healing' mechanism such as the collateral circulation of the heart. It would be na?¿ve, to assume the present work to be free of erroneous oversimplification, because the very nature of scientific work is related to generating (simple) hypotheses with their subsequent falsification. In that context and bluntly, my primary interest in the field of the collateral circulation was not initiated with a vision of eradicating the consequences of coronary artery disease (CAD) by promoting the growth of natural bypasses. The time for such sizeable ideas had passed in the 1970s with the start of the work by Wolfgang Schaper.