The heart in antiquity : a journey through Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, Pre-Hispanic America, and Greece
The heart in antiquity : a journey through Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, Pre-Hispanic America, and Greece
This book represents the first systematic investigation on ancient cardiology, which includes the first civilizations of human history, such as those flourished in Mesopotamia, Pharaonic Egypt, Vedic India, and China. It includes also major pre-Hispanic civilizations at their apex, namely the Maya, Aztec and Inca, given that they shared fundamental features with the first ones. Finally, it closes with Greek medicine because it represents crucial advancements which paved the way to modern cardiology. Nothing similar have been previously attempted, and we believe that just this feature represents an important value of this work. The cardiovascular system was not well understood anywhere in antiquity. The heart and vessels were viewed as system of conduits containing all kind of physiological and pathological fluids, such as blood, sperm, sweat, urine, and feces. Arteries and veins were not distinguished from neither an anatomical nor a physiological point of view. Circulation was far from being understood. After millennia of ignorance, William Harvey, in 1628, demonstrated that the heart was a pump and its function was to push blood in the systemic circulation. This is rightly considered the dawn of modern cardiovascular medicine. Consequently, all ideas, theories and practices of ancient medicine were reduced to unimportant superstitions. Historians of medicine, adapting to that “dogma”, relegated pre-Harveian cardiology to roughs notes, preventing a proper historical…
- N° scheda: D0104067871
- ISBN-13: 9788891327826
- Città: Roma
- Editore: L'Erma di Bretschneider
- Anno: 2023
- Mese: Febbraio
- Titolo della collana: Storia della medicina
- Numero collana: 6
- Numero pagine: 456
- Dorso: 24 cm
- Peso: 1409 gr
- Paese: Italia
- Lingua: Inglese
- Condizione: Nuovo
- Tipo di pubblicazione: Monografia
- Articolo (L', Il, La, Lo, ...): The