Reply

We are grateful to Dr. Haddad for his valuable and interesting comments. Regarding the cover plate, we obtained it from an article on a website on the Internet. The website is entitled MuslimHeritage.com (http://www.muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=209). The article is entitled “Who discovered pulmonary circulation: Ibn Al-Nafis or Harvey?”.

The author of that brief report, Dr. Ibrahim Shaikh did not specify the source of the illustration. Similar illustrations are found in a Google image search such as this image taken from the 17th–18th century illustrated manuscript of The Anatomy of the Human Body by Mansur ibn Ilyas. Dr. Haddad’s expertise on the subject, since he owns several original copies of the anatomical charts, has shed some light on this aspect of Islamic medical history. We hope that he can publish these charts with his comments about their origin in the Annals of Saudi Medicine or other medical journals for the benefit of the readers.

Regarding our article on Ibn Al Nafis, we appreciate Dr. Haddad’s detailed explanation of origin of the name of the town where Ibn Al Nafis was born. We had our data obtained from the references cited in the article.

We apologize for not citing properly the name of Dr. Sami Ibrahim Haddad (1890–1975) in reference number 9. Dr. Haddad was professor of surgery and urology, and then Dean of the School of Medicine at the American University of Beirut. He was a prolific writer and historian, and wrote 99 articles on a variety of surgical, urological, and historical subjects. His contributions to the history of Arabic and Islamic medicine are well known, including his book “The Contributions of the Arabs to the Medical Sciences” which was published in 1936.