Sir
Once again, the idea that the Chinese discovered the circulation of the blood before Harvey has been put forward, this time in Correspondence1. Joseph Needham2 does indeed quote passages from Chinese medical classics that, according to his translation, suggest the Chinese knew of the circulation of ‘vital energy’ (chhi, or ch'i , or qi) and that the heart acted as a pump. The problem is that Needham's translation of the passages is not accepted by other experts.
Paul Unschuld, for example, translates the same passages in a way indicating that the Chinese knew neither of the circulation of the blood (or qi) nor that the heart acted as a pump345.
Unfortunately, with a little stretch of the imagination and encouraged by the will to prove a point, one often can see ‘proof’ or suggestions of knowledge of the circulation when such proof or suggestions are not there. For example, the author of Peri kardies6 in the Hippocratic Corpus says that the aorta and the pulmonary arteries “are the springs of the nature of man, and the rivers there move throughout the body by which the body is watered”. Dante7 says “And the blood, which fills the veins, runs toward the heart which calls it.”
Should we therefore conclude that Dante and the author of Peri kardies had at least an inkling about circulation? Hardly.
References
Chau, P. L. Nature 404, 431 (2000).
Needham, J. & Lu, G. D. Celestial Lancets (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1980).
Unschuld, P. U. Nan-ching: The Classic of Difficult Issues 14 (Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, 1986
Unschuld, P. U. Medicine in China: A History of Ideas 371 (Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, 1985).
Prioreschi, P. A. History of Medicine I, 136 (Horatius Press, Omaha, 1996).
Hurlbutt, F. R. Bull. Hist. Med. VII, 1104–1113 (1939).
Alighieri, D. Rime VI, CIII, 45–47 (Longo, Ravenna, 1995).
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Prioreschi, P. … or was ‘blood as the river of life’ just poetic? . Nature 405, 993 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35016743
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35016743
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