+

Lastly, Bruno is considered by Pagel as a link of much importance between Andrea Cesalpino and Harvey. Cesalpino in + 1571 was the first of the anatomists to use the word circulatio, and as is well known, he described more or less correctly the pulmonary circulation.e But here he had been preceded by several others, notably Realdo Colombo in + 1559 and Michael Servetus in + 1546. Even more extraordinary, he had been preceded by the Damascus physician Ibn al-Qarashi al-Nafis (d. + 1288).f Ever since the first discovery of the relevant Arabic text by al-Tatawi (I) in 1924 there has been controversy as to whether or not this Arabic knowledge could have been tra,nsmitted to Harvey's + 16th-century precursors,g but the weight of evidence that has now become available indicates that there was indeed a transmission, not only of the idea but of the arguments used to support it.h What is more, al-Nafis may have had more than an inkling of the general circulation itself, for he spoke of the aorta as the great vessel that circulates the animal spirits to all the organs of the body. Both the statement itself and its expression in terms of what we should call chhi (animal spirit), invite the question (or is it but a wild surmise?) as to whether Ibn al-Nafis and his contemporaries in the Arabic world could have been influenced by Chinese medical physiology.i We have found nothing to suggest this in any of the

a In the De Rerum Principiis et Elementis et Causis; for the references see Pagel (9), who fully examined the position of Bruno and his relation to other thinkers, anatomists and experimenters.