Letter to the Editor Using colors in anatomical figures: A novel method for medical education in Medieval Age Karim Vessal a , Ali Noorafshan b,c , Pouya Faridi d , Arman Zargaran a,d,e, ⁎, Abdolali Mohagheghzadeh d a Research Office for the History of Persian Medicine, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran b Histomorphometry and Stereology Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran c Anatomy Department, School of Medicine, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran d Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Center and Department of Traditional Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran e Student Research Committee, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran article info Article history: Received 18 April 2014 Accepted 19 April 2014 Available online xxxx Keywords: History of medicine Anatomy Medical education Mansur Persia Dear Editor, Medieval medicine is shrouded to a great part in superstition and built on speculations. It was almost a universal belief in antiquity to consider human body as a microcosm, which reflected major forces and elements from the outside. The first rational approach to modify the above concept was made by Ancient Persians as well as Greeks: Hippocrates and later by Galen [1,2]. In medieval times, folklore and religion heavily imbibed medicine and a similar trend thrived also in the Islamic world which cumulated in magnificent works of Persian scholars between 9th and 14th centuries CE [3,4]. Medicine in Medieval Persia, similar to most centers of the western world, was dominated by the classic Greco-Roman and conventional Persian teachings to which were added essential works by the Islamic scholars. Because of that amalgamation of knowledge, no significant dis- parity was present between the medical teaching of Judeo–Christianity and that of Islam over their territorial influence. While the expanse of Galenic medicine ceased short of the borders of Chinese and Indian cultural boundaries [5]. Much of the theoretical foundation of medieval medicine was built on the heavily introverted pseudological filler theories of some sort to level off the knowledge gap arising from deficient empirical data needed for a logical deduction. To comply with the prevailing local logic-driven Weltanschauung views were developed similar to the long lasting theory of humorism which could answer so many questions. Applied to the knowledge of anatomy, it seems that the more obscure the interior of the body, the more room was left over for tor speculations to bridge out the gap. Banning of human dissection which prevailed in almost all medieval societies restricted the development of anatomy, and thus deprived human knowledge in medicine from his next tangible source. However, some knowledge on human anatomy and physiology was gleaned by animal dissection and vivisection, albeit with a limited sense for useful application in clinical medicine [6]. This fact, however, cannot have escaped attention of medical scholars and teachers of the time as evidenced by their ardent Baconian quest to unravel the structural mysteries of human body primarily aimed at developing more efficient approaches to the treatment of diseases. One of the scholars who astutely recognized the importance of anat- omy in the teaching of medicine and tried to distance himself from the prevalent concept of viewing the human body as a “black box”, was Persian physician, Mansur-ibn-Ilyas-Shirazi (1380–1422 AD, known as Mansur in the West) [6,7]. Following two decades of teaching general medicine, Mansur authored a book on general medicine entitled Kefaye Mojahedieh in which he, using didactic skills, mainly tackled on subjects he felt the pupils had problems with [8]. Noteworthy, however, is that his second compilation of a medical text was exclusively on human anatomy which to the best of our knowledge no medical author has previously pursued that trend. In his later work, Mansur inserted illustrations of an unprecedented accuracy for his time in the description of cranial as well as spinal nerves [9]. In his first treatise on general medicine, Mansur tried to present to his pupils a system as rational as possible from the available sources of his time with clear trend of rejecting speculation in favor of observation. In his second work, he concluded that ignorance of the anatomical facts can lead to many dangerous deviations in the rational management of the ailments. All in Persian language, he performed several innovations International Journal of Cardiology xxx (2014) xxx–xxx ⁎ Corresponding author at: Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Center and Department of Traditional Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy, Karafarin Street, Shiraz, Iran. Tel.: +98 9122060881 (mob). E-mail address: zargarana@sums.ac.ir (A. Zargaran). IJCA-18094; No of Pages 2 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcard.2014.04.193 0167-5273/© 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Cardiology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijcard Please cite this article as: Vessal K, et al, Using colors in anatomical figures: A novel method for medical education in Medieval Age, Int J Cardiol (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcard.2014.04.193