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

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