An untold story: The important contributions of Muslim scholars for the understanding of human anatomy

Abstract

It is usually assumed that Galen is one of the fathers of anatomy and that between the Corpus Galenicum and the Renaissance there was no major advance in anatomical knowledge. However, it is also consensually accepted that Muslim scholars had the intellectual leadership from the 8th/9th to 13th centuries, and that they made remarkable progresses in numerous scientific fields including medicine. So, how is it possible that they did not contribute to advance human anatomy during that period? According to the dominant view, Muslim scholars exclusively had a passive role: their transmission of knowledge from the Greeks to the West. Here, we summarize, for the first time in a single paper, the studies of major Muslim scholars that published on human anatomy before Vesalius. This summary is based on analyses of original Arabic texts and of more recent publications by anatomists and historians, and on comparisons between the descriptions provided by Galen and by these Muslim scholars. We show that Arabic speakers and Persians made important advances in human anatomy well before Vesalius. The most notable exception concerns the muscular system: strikingly, there were apparently neither advances made by Muslims nor by Westerners for more than 1000 years. Unbiased discussions of these and other related issues, and particularly of the mainly untold story about the major contributions of Muslim scholars to anatomy, are crucial to our knowledge of the history of anatomy, biology and sciences, and also of our way of thinking, biases, and prejudices. Anat Rec, 300:986-1008, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Links between the discovery of primates and anatomical comparisons with humans, the chain of being, our place in nature, and racism

“…My colleagues and I have recently published detailed tables comparing, for each muscle, the descriptions of Galen versus the current knowledge on human anatomy (Alghamdi, Ziermann, & Diogo, ). Therefore, I will only provide here a few emblematic examples illustrating these differences and also the very detailed way in which Galen described Macaca sylvanus .…”

“…These two muscles were particularly important for human evolutionary history (Diogo & Abdala, ; Diogo, Richmond, & Wood, ; Diogo et al, ). In addition, in a few instances Galen inaccurately described some of those features of macaques that are in fact present in humans, therefore contributing to further erroneous ideas about what then became to be accepted by most as the “standard human anatomy.” For example, Galen did not recognize the extensor carpi radialis brevis and longus as separate muscles in the monkeys he dissected, despite the fact that these two muscles are present in monkeys and humans alike (Alghamdi et al, ).…”

“…More known to the general public are Galen's descriptions of skeletal elements that are also clearly based on observations of macaques and other animals and that do not apply at all to humans, for example his descriptions of separated left and right lower jaws and of premaxillae. As recently reviewed in Alghamdi et al (), “these errors had crucial repercussions for anatomy in particular, and biology and science in general, because Galen so impressed the people of his time and of succeeding ages that for centuries his works were regarded as almost infallible.” This reverence for Galen is “partially related to the fact that, although he remained a pagan, he believed in one God and developed the idea that every organ in the human body was created by a God in the best possible form and for its perfect use, an idea that fitted in well with that of Christianity” (Alghamdi et al, ; see also Cunningham, ; Mayr, ). In reality only very few pre‐Vesalius authors—including some Muslim scholars (Alghamdi et al, )—realized and/or were brave enough to state that Galen's descriptions did not match human anatomy.…”

“…My colleagues and I have recently published detailed tables comparing, for each muscle, the descriptions of Galen versus the current knowledge on human anatomy (Alghamdi, Ziermann, & Diogo, 2017).…”

“Something There Is That Doesn't Love a Wall,” and Other Lessons for Science

“…In this month's issue of The Anatomical Record , we proudly present an article by Alghamdi et al (, this issue, pp. 986–1008) from the Department of Anatomy at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C., that peels back the curtain on some of the extraordinary work done by Muslim anatomists of the Medieval to early Renaissance periods largely in the non‐Western part of the world.…”