Anatomy and autopsy

Anatomy and autopsy has been a challenge since a long time ago as it was illegal in most of the religious traditions. After the rise of islam those Who Were engaged in this career Were treated as Criminals. Despite all the religious, moral and social limitations, there are some evidences which show that scientists had been doing autopsy secretly. Dissecting the Corpse for forensic reasons was completely banned except for testing to see if it has been a natural death or not, and therefore physicians studied the anatomy of animals instead, which sometimes misled them. Iranian-Islamic medicine made a significant progress in a wide range of different medical fields from internal medicine, psychiatry, public health and diet to major surgical operations such as eye surgery, tooth restoration, breaking and removing the bladder and kidney stones, replacing the dislocated joints, orthopedics and prevention of unwanted pregnancy, etc. Islamic scholars not only saved Greco-Roman medicine from the complete decline and rescued the past information by translating medicine literature into Arabic language in Dar al-Hekma (House of Wisdom) of Al-Mammon, but also they used the big libraries and knowledge of eastern ancient civilizations such as Babylon, Indian, Chinese, Egyptian, Iranian, Greek and Roman medicine and created the first global medicine School. iranian scholars founded the medical and Scientific school of Jondishapour, some medical schools and then some hospitals which could be compared with the contemporary ones. They were the pioneers of medicine in a large part of the World for several centuries. Undoubtedly When modern anatomists studies the past literature, they will find out that this high level of accuracy and precision at that time when there was no microscope and radiography could not be possible unless by doing autopsy. This claim can be approved by addressing Some evidences such as presence of experienced surgeons such as Ahvazi, Razi and Zahravi and invention of more than 100 surgical instruments which are still in use.In addition, based on the Islamic laeology which has rooted from Avestan tradition, understanding the human body is the basis for understanding the universe and then God. Therefore it was necessary for all students and Scholars of different Scientific areas to do even a short Course on anatomy and autopsy.It is not Surprising, thus, that many of books written by Islamic scholars contains a chapter on anatomy.