Ibn Na fi s and the early description of the role of coronary arteries in blood 3 supply of the heart

Baharvand Ahmadi, B and Zargaran, A and Bahmani, M (2015) Ibn Na fi s and the early description of the role of coronary arteries in blood 3 supply of the heart. Int J Cardiol. pp. 1-3.

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Abstract

Ibn Na fi s, a Syrian surgeon and physician was born in Al-Qarsh 21 near Damascus in 1210 AD ( Fig. 1 ). He studied medicine in his home- 22 land under supervision of Ibn-Essuri and then went to Cairo. He 23 found al-Mansauri hospital and also became dean of the Natural 24 School of al-Salahi hospital, a position he held until he died in 25 1288 AD. He wrote about twenty medical books during his scienti fi c 26 life [1,2] . 27 In the mid-20th century when his book, “ Sharh-e Tashrieh-e Qanun 28 [Commentary on Anatomy of Canon] ” was discovered in the archives 29 of the Prussian State Library in Berlin in 1924, he became famous 30 because it was believed he was the originator of pulmonary circulation 31 [3,4] . Although nowadays we know he was not the originator of this the- 32 ory and it was presented by his predecessors like Akhawayni (? – 983 AD) 33 [5] and rooted in ancient Persian medicine [6] , he had other novel 34 theories in cardiology which were unique in that time [7] . 35 Ibn Na fi s doubt Avicenna's theories on blood supplying of the heart 36 in his “ Commentary on Anatomy of Canon ” book. He wrote in this 37 book: “ His [ Avicenna ' s ] statement that the blood that is in the right side 38 nourishes the heart is not true at all , for nourishment of the heart is actually 39 from the blood that goes through the vessels that permeate the body of the 40 heart ” [8] .Itisthe fi rst reported document on the role of coronary 41 arteries in the history of cardiology. 42 In medieval Persia, the paradigm of medicine was based on humoral 43 theory (a holistic paradigm). In this view, anatomy was not too 44 important and health and disease were belonging to balance and 45 imbalance of four humors. Therefore, most of physicians like Avicenna 46 (980 – 1032) did not attention to this fi eld and mostly followed Galen 47 and copied his anatomical parts including his mistakes (like three 48 ventricle in heart, existing pores in the heart septum, etc) in their 49 books. Some others like Akhawayni and Haly Abbas (949 – 982 AD) 50 accessed ancient Persian medical texts and therefore in some cases 51 used their right theories (in contrast of false Greek theories) like International Journal of Cardiology xxx (2015) xxx – xxx ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Traditional Pharmacy, School of Traditional Medicine, Vafamesh Street, Heravi Sq., Tehran, Iran. E-mail address: zargarana@sums.ac.ir (A. Zargaran). IJCA-21707; No of Pages 2 Fig. 1. An imaginary picture of Ibn Na fi s when autopsied. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcard.2015.11.171 0167-5273/© 2015 Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Cardiology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijcard Please cite this article as: B. Baharvand-Ahmadi, et al., Ibn Na fi s and the early description of the role of coronary arteries in blood supply of the heart, Int J Cardiol (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcard.2015.11.171

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