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Q J Med 2004; 97: 111-112
© Association of Physicians 2004; all rights reserved.

Coda

Cultural nepotism

The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below.

Do you know who first discovered the systemic circulation of the blood? Of course you do. He was an Englishman called William Harvey. But can you name the person who, three centuries earlier, first described the pulmonary circulation? Almost certainly not. He was a Syrian Arab physician by the name of Ibn al-Nafis. The writings of al-Nafis were probably known to Michael Servetus, whose own understanding of the pulmonary vessels paved the way for Harvey's theory.

If this example of Eurocentrism in our knowledge of history was a fairly isolated . . . [Full Text of this Article]

John Launer


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