کالبدشکافی

One of the medical issues related to jurisprudence regarding to Shar’a justifiability is dissecting cadaver for medical education. Teaching and learning all sciences and techniques, including medicine, is certainly necessary for human beings. Dissection of human cadaver is an introductory course in medical education in one side and obligation to respect for Muslim dead body like the live individual is imperative on the other side. Moreover, irreverence to Muslim-whether live or dead-is forbidden-haram- in Islamic thoughts. The essential question is how it is possible to maintain both respect for Muslim dead body and meanwhile help to improve and develop medical education and related fields in Islamic community by having permission to dissect the dead body of Muslims.In the present article it is attempted to discuss and analyze the opinions of some of great religious scholars in the past and those of the contemporary religious authorities. Furthermore, Fatwa of the Supreme Iranian Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is also quoted here. In conclusion,religious scholars of Islam have emphasized the respect for Muslim dead body and have declared that non-Muslim body should be dissected in medical education.

Anatomy is a branch of science that deals with different parts of human body and its organizational structure. It has various goals, such as insight into the divine perfection and understanding the causes of diseases and their treatments. Anatomy in the Islamic era included physiology too. This research aimed at providing an overview on anatomy in the Reference Materials of Persian Medicine.

A qualitative study (content-analytic library research) was performed based on the books of Persian medicine. This study was conducted at several stages; finding the keywords, searching in reference texts of Iranian-Islamic medicine, in history books and Islamic encyclopedias, and in Persian and Latin electronic banks, then sorting, organizing, and comparing the information.

Anatomical knowledge is prerequisite to treatment and surgery. The works of Muslim scientists on anatomy, like the Europeans, were found to be influenced by the works of Galen. According to evidence, Muslim doctors performed autopsy and were great surgeons.

The basis of the new anatomy enhanced by Vesalius is similar to the Iranian-Islamic anatomy that was introduced to Europe after revising the texts of Galen. Considering the holistic viewpoints in Persian medicine, further research is needed to adapt that to modern medicine.

In the medicine of Islamic civilization era, surgical operation was one of the alternatives in health services and this kind of treatment required physicians to be acquainted with anatomy, however anatomy on those days implied more than dissecting the body organs and included morphology (the science of the structure and form of the body organs) as well as physiology (the science of the functions of body organs). The physicians of Islamic period could acquire this knowledge through six ways:1. Study of ancient medical books,
2. Study of animals and dissection of their body organs,
3. Study of the dead bodies,
4. Observing wounds and injuries of wars or accidents, casualties.
5. Logical deductions supported by natural laws and scientifictheoretical backups.
6. Dissection of human corpses.
Historical evidences show that physicians of that era applied the first five methods to cure people; in relation to the last method – regarding the religiously prohibition of dissecting human corpses – there is no evidence for the condemnation of this method by those physicians, though some hints denote that it had even been used by them.