Historical Notes: Which organ develops first in the intrauterine life?

Studying on the intrauterine development period is very difficult and it requires special technologic equipments. The number of studies on fetal development has increased by the improvement of ultrasonography and Doppler techniques and so fetal development is well understood. Mansur b. Muhammed b. Ahmed who lived in 14th century was a Turkish scientist and the writer of “Kitab-ı Teşhirü’l Ebdan Min e’t Tıb” which was one of the three illustrated anatomy books of that time (Fig. 1). He also made the anatomical description of ventricular septal defects in his book before Henry L. Roger (1). Some of the resources claim that the writer was Persian because the book was written in Persian and Mansur b. Muhammed b. Ahmed lived in Shiraz. However if the book’s literary language is analyzed it can clearly be understood that writer’s native tongue was not Persian. Persian was used commonly as a scientific and literary language at that time. In addition, the drawings in the book are matching the samples with the ones in the Turkish culture (2).