Akmal M, Zulkifle M, Ansari Ah
National Institute of Unani Medicine, Bangalore, India.
Heart Views. 2010 Mar;11(1):26-30.
Scientific theories take centuries to come into existence and they keep on evolving. Uncountable intellectual minds work on these theories; some fail to do anything about it; some add a little after tremendous efforts, and some people give remarkable and unforgettable contribution.As far as credit is concerned, the person who is able to prove the theory by his facts and who clears the maximum doubts by his observations, experimentations, facts and reasoning, gets the credit for that theory, and this should be done with honesty.The theory of pulmonary circulation took more than 2000 years to come into existence as we know it today. With the passage of time different people were given credit. Some say that it was given to Galen; some say it was Michael Servetus; others say that Realdus Columbus was the real discoverer; some gave the credit to Ibn Nafis, and finally people gave the credit to William Harvey. But after the rediscovery of Ibn Nafis' manuscript no.62243 titled Sharah al Tashreeh al Qanoon, or "Commentary on the anatomy of Canon of Avicenna" in 1924 AD in Europe, it became clear that Ibn Nafis had described the pulmonary circulation almost 300 years before Harvey, and the historians like Aldo Mieli, Max Mayrhoff, Edward Coppola etc. clearly state that Ibn Nafis is the real discoverer of the pulmonary circulation and that he should be given the credit for the discovery of the pulmonary circulation.
科学理论的形成需要数百年时间，并且它们会持续发展。无数智者致力于这些理论研究；有些人毫无建树；有些人经过巨大努力后有了些许进展；还有些人做出了卓越且令人难忘的贡献。就功劳归属而言，能够用事实证明理论，并通过观察、实验、事实和推理消除最多疑问的人，会因该理论而获得赞誉，而且这应该秉持诚实的态度。我们如今所熟知的肺循环理论的形成花费了2000多年时间。随着时间推移，不同的人被认为有功劳。有人说是盖伦；有人说是迈克尔·塞尔维特；其他人则说雷亚尔多·哥伦布是真正的发现者；有人将功劳归于伊本·纳菲斯，最后人们把功劳给了威廉·哈维。但在1924年欧洲重新发现伊本·纳菲斯编号为62243的手稿《医典解剖学注释》，即《阿维森纳医典解剖学评注》之后，很明显伊本·纳菲斯在哈维之前近300年就描述了肺循环，像阿尔多·米耶利、马克斯·迈尔霍夫、爱德华·科波拉等历史学家明确指出，伊本·纳菲斯是肺循环的真正发现者，他应该因肺循环这一发现而获得赞誉。
