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Article Evaluation
Article being reviewed: Qalawun Complex

My comments: Overall, the way that Wikipedia approaches topics appears to be very similar to what we've discussed in class. Wikipedia requires strong citations and a commitment to the unbiased truth. That being said, the goal of a Wikipedia article is very different from the goal of a research essay like what we wrote in class. In an essay, one must put forth an original thesis, but the entire purpose of Wikipedia entries is to summarize the research of others. Inserting your own hypotheses is strictly forbidden.
 * Starting off, the intro is extremely short and doesn't fully summarize the information in the article. Out of the information that is present, some of it is extraneous. Much of this article needs editing, but the introduction in particular needs a complete overhaul.
 * The history section is also incredibly short. We discussed some of the long and storied history of this complex in class - this Wikipedia article is barely scratching the surface of what exists.
 * The sections listed are all relevant to the topic but could all do with more information. Most importantly, this article is wanting for citations. The majority of its claims are not cited at all, and the claims that are cited are all pulled from a single source (which is improperly cited). There are five external links, one of which did not work and four of which were websites that were not peer-reviewed. This article has no viable support for any of its content (which is also abbreviated) - it needs significant revision.
 * The language of the article is not neutral. The authors have frequently included persuasive language and value judgments that undermine the article's integrity.
 * The grammar has not been checked; the article is littered with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, making it a confusing read.
 * The talk page of the article includes only two comments, one from 2011 and one from 2016, though the page says that there was an edit on 3/7/2018. Despite the fact that this page needs revision, and that some users may be actively revising it, there are no conversations taking place. The initial author does not appear to have written anything.
 * The article is flagged for needing sources, but I would argue that the flag does not go far enough. Only a couple sentences are marked as "citation needed" throughout the article, when in reality, every single sentence should receive a new citation.

Possible Articles to Edit for the Final Project

 * Al-'Adudi Hospital (Al-'Adudi Hospital)
 * This article contains virtually no information despite being an important hospital in Baghdad that was active for many years and exhibited many of the features of the hospitals we know today. By adding more information to this article, my group could help to educate the public on the important role that early Islamic hospitals played in the development of the modern hospital.
 * Qalawun complex (Qalawun complex)
 * This is the article that I critiqued above; it contains content, but is woefully lacking in sources and complete information. My group could do a complete overhaul of this article, writing a better introduction, adding sources and correcting false details, and adding more information about this fascinating hospital that functioned for centuries.
 * Shah Jahan (Shah Jahan)
 * This article is already filled with a good bit of information, but much of it is presented without citation. In editing this article, my group would have a great opportunity to fact-check what exists and to either add citations or to rewrite the article with correct information and adequate sourcing. As it stands, this article is not a reliable source for a medically and culturally important figure.

Actual Project

 * Editing: Discovery of Pulmonary Circulation in the Ibn al-Nafis main page
 * Critiques:
 * This section is written in a strange order (starts with the discovery of al-Nafis's manuscript, jumps backward, doesn't mention Galen much, large blocks of direct quotes from al-Nafis
 * Editing: History in the Pulmonary Circulation page
 * Doesn't mention Galen, and only briefly mentions those who followed after al-Nafis
 * Needs a more thorough description of the history here
 * Editing: Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon
 * Contains almost no information regarding the text of this book
 * Needs edits on contents and legacy

History of Pulmonary Circulation
The discovery of pulmonary circulation has been attributed to several scientists over the years. In much of modern medical literature, the discovery is credited to English physician William Harvey (1578 - 1657 CE). Other sources credit Spanish physician Michael Servetus (c. 1509 - 1553 CE) and Arab physician Ibn al-Nafis (1213 - 1288 CE) with the discovery. However, the first descriptions of the cardiovascular system came before these men.

The earliest known description of the role of air in circulation was produced in Egypt in 3500 BCE. At this time, Egyptians believed that the heart was the origin of many channels that connected different parts of the body and transported air as well as urine, blood, and the soul. The Edwin Smith Papyrus (1700 BCE), named for American Egyptologist Edwin Smith (1822 - 1906 CE) who purchased the scroll in 1862, provided evidence that Egyptians believed that the heartbeat created a pulse that transported the above substances throughout the body. A second scroll, the Ebers Papyrus (c. 1550 BCE), also emphasized the importance of the heart and its connection to vessels throughout the body and described methods to detect cardiac disease through pulse abnormalities. However, despite their knowledge of the heartbeat, vessels, and pulse, the Egyptians attributed the movement of substances throughout the vessels to air that resided in these channels, rather than to the heart's force. The Egyptians knew that air played an important role in circulation, but they did not yet have a concept for the precise role of the lungs.

The next addition to the human understanding of pulmonary circulation came with the Ancient Greeks. The physician Alcmaeon (520 - 450 BCE) proposed that the brain, not the heart, was the connection point for all of the vessels in the body. He believed that the function of these vessels was to bring the spirit (pneuma) and air to the brain. Empedocles (492 - 432 BCE), a philosopher, proposed a series of pipes impermeable to blood but continuous with blood vessels which carried the pneuma throughout the body. He proposed that this spirit was internalized with pulmonary respiration. The physician Hippocrates (460 - 370 BCE) developed the view that the liver and spleen produced blood, which traveled to the heart to be cooled by the lungs that surrounded it. Hippocrates described the heart as having two ventricles connected by an interventricular septum. He depicted the heart as the connecting point for all the vessels of the body and proposed that some vessels carried only blood, while others also carried air. These air-carrying vessels were the pulmonary veins, which brought air to the left ventricle, and the pulmonary artery, which carried air to the right ventricle and blood to the lungs. He also proposed two atria of the heart that functioned to capture air. Hippocrates was one of the first to begin to accurately describe the anatomy of the heart and to describe the involvement of the lungs in circulation, but his descriptions of the process of pulmonary circulation and of the functions of the parts of the heart were still largely incorrect.

Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle (384 - 322 BCE) followed Hippocrates and proposed that the heart had three ventricles, rather than two, that all connected to the lungs. The Greek physician Erasistratus (315 - 240 BCE) agreed with Hippocrates and Aristotle that the heart was the origin of all of the vessels in the body but proposed a system in which air was breathed into the lungs and traveled to the left ventricle via pulmonary veins. It was transformed there into the pneuma and distributed throughout the body by arteries, which contained only air. In this system, veins distributed blood throughout the body, and this blood did not circulate, but rather was consumed by the organs.

The Greek physician Galen (129 - c. 210 CE) provided the next insights into pulmonary circulation. Though many of his theories, like those of his predecessors, were incorrect, his theory of pulmonary circulation dominated the medical community for hundreds of years after his death. Galen contradicted Erasistratus before him by proposing that arteries carried both air and blood, rather than air alone. He proposed that the liver was the point of origin for all blood vessels and that the heart was not a pumping muscle, but rather an organ which blood passed through. Galen's theory included a new description of pulmonary circulation. In it, air was inhaled into the lungs where it became the pneuma. Pulmonary veins transmitted this pneuma to the left ventricle of the heart to cool the blood simultaneously arriving there. This mixture of pneuma, blood, and cooling produced the vital spirits which could then be transported throughout the body via arteries. Galen also proposed that the heat of the blood arriving in the heart produced noxious vapors which were expelled through the same pulmonary veins that first brought the pneuma. He wrote that the right ventricle played a different role than the left; it transported blood to the lungs where the impurities were vented out so that clean blood could be distributed throughout the body. Though Galen's description of the anatomy of the heart was more complete than those of his predecessors, it included several mistakes. Most notably, Galen believed that blood flowed between the two ventricles of the heart through small, invisible pores in the interventricular septum.

The next developments in the human understanding of pulmonary circulation did not come until centuries later. Persian polymath Avicenna (c. 980 - 1037 CE) wrote a medical encyclopedia entitled The Canon of Medicine. In this book, he translated and compiled contemporary medical knowledge and added some new information of his own. However, Avicenna's description of pulmonary circulation reflected the incorrect views of Galen. Another Persian physician, Ibn al-Nafis, wrote the Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon in 1242 in which he provided the first known accurate description of pulmonary circulation as it is known today. Ibn al-Nafis made two key improvements on Galen's ideas of pulmonary circulation. First, he disproved the existence of the pores in the interventricular septum that Galen had believed to allow blood flow between the left and right ventricles. Second, he followed that the only way for blood to get from the right to the left ventricle in the absence of interventricular pores was pulmonary circulation. He also described the anatomy of the lungs in clear, correct detail, which his predecessors had not. However, like Aristotle and Galen, al-Nafis still believed that the vital spirit was formed in the left ventricle from a mixture of blood and air. Despite the enormity of Ibn al-Nafis's improvements on the theories of pulmonary circulation that preceded him, his commentary on The Canon was not widely known to Western scholars until the manuscript was discovered in Berlin, Germany, in 1924. As a result, Ibn al-Nafis was not widely credited with the discovery of pulmonary circulation in Western medical literature until recently.

It took several hundred years for European scientists and physicians to reach the same conclusions that al-Nafis had. Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519 CE) was one of the first to propose that the heart was just a muscle, rather than a vessel of spirits and air, but he ascribed to Galen's ideas of circulation and defended the existence of interventricular pores. The Flemish physician Andreas Vesalius (1514 - 1564 CE) published corrections to Galen's view of circulatory anatomy, questioning the existence of interventricular pores, in his book De humani corporis fabrica libri septem in 1543. Michael Servetus after him was the first European physician to accurately describe pulmonary circulation. His assertions matched those of al-Nafis, and though he has been frequently credited with making the discovery on his own, it is likely that he had access to Ibn al-Nafis's work while writing his own texts. Servetus published his findings in Christianismi Restituto (1553), a theological work that was criticized and ignored by many Christian factions at the time. Italian physician Realdo Colombo (c. 1515 - 1559 CE) published a book, De re anatomica libri XV, in 1559 that accurately described pulmonary circulation as well. It is still debated among historians as to whether or not Colombo reached his conclusions on his own or if he based his work on those of al-Nafis and Servetus. Finally, William Harvey provided the most complete and accurate description of pulmonary circulation of any of the European physicians in his treatise Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus in 1628.

Original Text:

Pulmonary circulation was first described by the Arab physician Ibn al-Nafis in his Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon (1242). Ibn al-Nafis described pulmonary circulation as:

It was later described by Michael Servetus in the "Manuscript of Paris" (near 1546, never published) and later published in his Christianismi Restitutio (1553). Since it was a theology work condemned by most of the Christian factions of his time, the discovery remained mostly unknown until the dissections of William Harvey in 1616.

In 1559, Realdo Colombo explained the Pulmonary function. Prior to Colombo’s work, anatomists such as Galen and Vesalius examined blood vessels separately from the organs of the body. Colombo instead considered these vessels together with the organs they support, and from this was able to conceptualize the flow of blood to and from each organ, supporting his discovery of pulmonary transition of the blood. Colombo also viewed the lungs separately from the heart, and assigned it as having a special role in respiration.