Ibn al- Nafis
(1213 - 17 Dec 1288)
Arab physician who was the first to elucidate the pulmonary circulation of blood. He also wrote treatises on eye diseases and diet.
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Science Quotes by Ibn al- Nafis (1 quote)
This is the right cavity of the two cavities of the heart. When the blood in this cavity has become thin, it must be transferred into the left cavity, where the pneuma is generated. But there is no passage between these two cavities, the substance of the heart there being impermeable. It neither contains a visible passage, as some people have thought, nor does it contain an invisible passage which would permit the passage of blood, as Galen thought. The pores of the heart there are compact and the substance of the heart is thick. It must, therefore, be that when the blood has become thin, it is passed into the arterial vein [pulmonary artery] to the lung, in order to be dispersed inside the substance of the lung, and to mix with the air. The finest parts of the blood are then strained, passing into the venous artery [pulmonary vein] reaching the left of the two cavities of the heart, after mixing with the air and becoming fit for the generation of pneuma.
— Ibn al- Nafis
Albert Z. Iskandar, 'Ibn al-Nafis', In Charles Coulston Gillispie (ed.), Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1974), Vol. 9, 603.