IBN AL-NAFIS AND THE DISCOVERY OF THE PULMONARY CIRCULATION AND CORONARY BLOOD FLOW

Abstract

Jaffar Shehatha* & Abdulsalam Y Taha@ *MB ChB, AMC, FICMS, FRCS, FRACS, Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon, Head of Cardiac Surgery, Suleimania Center for Heart Diseases. Adjunct Senior lecturer/ University of Western Australia, School of Surgery. @MB ChB, FIBMS (CTVS) Professor and Head of Cardio-thoracic and Vascular Surgery Unit, School of Medicine, University of Suleimania, Consultant Thoracic and Vascular Surgeon, Suleimania Teaching Hospital, Suleimania, Iraq Correspondence to: Mr. Jaffar Shehatha, E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Ibn al-Nafis was a great Arabic scholar and physician of his time. His account of coronary blood flow and pulmonary circulation in 13th century preceded the description by European researchers by almost three decades. At his time anatomical dissections were prohibited by the social and religious Muslim rules. Therefore it is not exactly known how he had reached his conclusions, whether through conjecture, observation on animals like monkeys, or by autopsy studies of humans. Because of the long period between Avicenna (the name used by the west for Ibn-Sina) and the appearance of Ibn-Al-Nafis and because of Ibn-Al-Nafis’s remarkable contributions many called him as the (second Avicenna). Ibn-Al-Nafis was a remarkable man and he deserves to be better known.

Keywords

• pulmonary circulation