Ibn al-Nafis

Ibn al-Nafis was a 13th-century Arab physician and polymath who described the passage of blood through the lungs and wrote influential works on medicine, law, and theology.

Pulmonary circulation: The circulation of blood from the heart to the lungs and back to the heart. Ibn al-Nafis described this route and rejected Galen’s proposed passage through the heart’s septum.
The Canon of Medicine: A medical encyclopedia by the Persian physician Avicenna, widely studied for centuries. Ibn al-Nafis wrote a commentary on its anatomy and used it as a framework for critique.
Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna’s Canon: Ibn al-Nafis’s commentary on the anatomical section of Avicenna’s medical encyclopedia. It contains his best-known account of blood’s passage through the lungs.
Ibn Sina: The Latin name for Avicenna, the Persian physician and philosopher whose Canon became a standard medical text. Ibn al-Nafis’s commentary scrutinized the medical authority associated with this name.
Galenic physiology: A medical system based on Galen’s accounts of anatomy, physiology, and disease. Ibn al-Nafis disputed Galen’s claim that blood passed directly between the heart’s ventricles.
Avicenna: A Persian philosopher and physician whose writings shaped medicine and philosophy across Eurasia. Ibn al-Nafis engaged with Avicenna’s medical canon while revising inherited anatomical explanations.
Mujaz al-Qanun: Ibn al-Nafis’s concise medical compendium summarizing Avicenna’s Canon. This widely used work shows how he organized and taught medical knowledge.
William Harvey: An English physician who published a quantitative account of blood circulation in 1628. His later account of systemic circulation is often compared with Ibn al-Nafis’s earlier pulmonary description.
Interventricular septum: The wall separating the right and left ventricles of the heart. His argument emphasized that this wall has no pores for blood to pass through.
Galen: A Greek physician whose anatomical and medical writings shaped medicine for centuries. His account of cardiac septal pores was a central target of Ibn al-Nafis’s criticism.

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