The ancient chinese model

There is plenty of evidence which shows that the circulation of the blood was well understood in China by the second century BCE at the latest - about two thousand years before it was accepted in Europe!

The ancient Chinese thought there were two separate circulations of fluids in the body. Blood, pumped by the heart, flowed through the arteries, veins and capillaries. Ch'i, an ethereal, rarefied form of energy, was pumped by the lungs to circulate through the body in invisible tracts.

The Yellow Emperor's Manual says :

The function of the tract-channel system of the human body is to promote a normal passage [circulation] of the blood and the ch'i, so that the vital essentials derived from man's food can nourish the yin and yang viscera, sustain the muscles, sinews and bones, and lubricate the joints.

What we call the vascular system is like dykes and retaining walls forming a circle of tunnels which control the path that is traversed by blood so that it cannot escape or find anywhere to leak away.

The heart was seen as a pump to move the blood - in fact Chinese doctors used a system of bellows and bamboo tubes to show their pupils how the heart and blood circulation worked.

When Europeans began to visit China, they took these ideas of the circulation back with them, and for a while people took notice. But soon the Chinese ideas of the circulation of the blood were completely forgotten again - a loss which must have affected the health and well being of thousands of people over the centuries.

ctivity 1

ctivity 2

Galen of Pergamum

Ibn al-Nafis

Michael Servetus

William Harvey