The Damascene physician who described the pulmonary circulation of the blood some three centuries before it was known in Europe.
Life
Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288), a physician and polymath working in Damascus and Cairo, corrected the anatomy of Galen and Avicenna by describing the lesser (pulmonary) circulation — that blood passes from the right chamber of the heart to the lungs and back — long before Servetus and Harvey in Europe. A prolific author on medicine, law, and theology, he also wrote a philosophical novel, the Theologus Autodidactus. His anatomical insight, rediscovered only in the twentieth century, marks him as a major figure in the history of medicine.