History of the Human Body for Kids - when did doctors find out how the body worked?

History of the Human Body

Doctors have been trying to figure out how the human body works since the Stone Age, and there are still many things we don't know about the human body even today. Medical researchers all over the world have contributed bits of knowledge, and learned from one another. Some things they figured out were right; other times their ideas turned out to be wrong.

In Ancient Egypt, doctors figured out that your pulse was related to your heart-beat, though they didn't know exactly why. They learned that your bronchial tubes connected your throat to your lungs.

Beginning about 300 BC, doctors all across Europe and Asia began to think that the body was made out of three or four different substances, which the Greeks called "humors". The Greek humors were blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm (snot). Indian doctors called . In China, doctors thought that people were made of yin and yang. These substances needed to be kept in balance with each other, and if they got out of balance you would get sick.

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The Islamic doctor ibn Nafis, in the 1200s AD, was the first doctor to understand that blood goes from your heart to your lungs to get air, and then back to your heart again to get pumped all over your body.

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To find out more about the history of the human body, check out these books from Amazon or from your local library: