Tag: Cardiology
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Ibn al-Nafis and the pulmonary circulation
Medical advances are often made over long periods of time, making it difficult to assign priority to any particular individual. Such has been the case for the ”discovery” of the pulmonary circulation, a distinction variously assigned to three anatomists of the sixteenth century, Michael Servetus, Realdo Colombo, and Andrea Cesalpino. But in 1924 the Egyptian…
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Coronary moments: Reflections on the impossible anastomosis
Jason J. HanPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, USA The arteries of the heart are called coronary arteries, meaning “of a crown.” Like a crown, they course around and adorn the walls of the heart, keeping it alive with vital nutrients and oxygen. When these arteries are blocked, the heart starves, causing crushing chest pain and robbing people of…
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Andrea Cesalpino (ca. 1520–1603)
Of the three 16th century Italian anatomists who advanced our knowledge about the pulmonary circulation, Andrea Cesalpino is perhaps the least known. Unlike Michael Servetus (c. 1511–1553) he was not burned at the stake for heresy. Unlike Realdo Colombo (c. 1515–1559) he did not carry out thousands of dissections and work with Michelangelo, and unlike…
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Realdo Colombo (ca. 1515–1559)
Although Italy during the Renaissance consisted of a mosaic of independent states, its inhabitants and particularly academicians seem to have moved freely from one city state to another. Thus it came about that the anatomist Matteo Realdo Colombo was born and educated in the principality of Milan (in philosophy and later as an apothecary); was…
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Michael Servetus (ca. 1511–1553)
Michael Servetus is remembered for being burned at the stake for heresy and for making important observations on the pulmonary circulation. In his Christianismi Restitutio, a theological treatise that touched on medicine, he postulated that blood in the body was divided into different segments (which he called God-ordained spirits): one in the arteries, one in…
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Defining dead
Arya ShahRochester, MN, USA The checklist of death was foreign to mewhen I first ran down its list.It’s hard to describe that encounter with death,but let’s see if I can convey the gist. It started on a bright summer morning.A boy woke up for a day of fun.He planned to go on a hike with…
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Measure of the heart: Santorio Santorio and the pulsilogium
Richard de GrijsDaniel VuillerminBeijing, China The heart is a musical organ. The irregularity of one’s inhalation and exhalation of air defies musicality, while the involuntary rumbling of moving gas in the intestines is embarrassingly analogous to the timbre of the tuba or trombone. Biomedical terminology and poetry are seemingly antithetical, but of the heart they…
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The pulsilogium and the diagnosis of love sickness
Donatella LippiGiuseppe MasciaLuigi PadelettiFlorence, Italy Doctors since time immemorial have felt the pulse of their patients, noting its regularity, frequency, strength, and breadth, at times using colorful expressions to variously describe it as “formicant” or “vermicular” (ant-like or worm-like),1 and diagnosing “love sickness” in maidens by the presence of the so-called pulsus amatorius. (Fig 1.)…
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A theologian answers questions about the heart: St. Thomas Aquinas’ De Motu Cordis
Michael PottsNorth Carolina, United States Suppose you are a high school teacher in a basic biology class and you have a question about the function of the heart. You decide to ask an expert, so you dial a university and ask for . . . a theologian. This is what one teacher did, although he…
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A fortunate man
Martin DukeMystic, Connecticut, United States Earlier in the week the last patients were seen, their records given to them or sent to their new physicians, and the final farewells were said. The movers have left, and the office is now empty except for an old cast-iron medicine cabinet, a pencil sharpener attached to the wall,…