فهرست نشریات علمی دسترسی آزاد ایران

Introduction: Today, medical students pass anatomy as the theoretical and practical courses and learn about the internal organs in autopsy halls from the first year of university, but in earlier times, despite the limitations of facilities and cultural rigor in autopsy, how many medical practitioners  knew about inside the body, especially about female genitalia? It was a main question that led us to conduct this research. Method: This research is a descriptive review in more than 20 references of Iranian traditional medicine from 3rd to 13th centuries AD, which study the Anatomical descriptions of female internal genitalia in Iranian traditional medicine references and compare it with today's science. Also teaching method of Anatomy in traditional medicine is introduced briefly. Results: According to this research, although traditional physicians often used animals for learning and training of anatomy due to cultural considerations, but some anatomical descriptions are so detailed that is showing the autopsy of the human body, even though secretly. For describing and teaching anatomy, parts of the body were likened to tangible things. Sizes were usually described with a phalange. Although the photographic equipment was not available, descriptions are tangible and understandable. Illustrated anatomical books can be seen from the eighth century AD onwards. Iranian traditional practitioners at least from the third century, and even before Avicenna, knew the external genitalia in addition to internal genitalia as well, they named various components of the female reproductive system and described its functions. Various parts of internal genitalia named the uterus (Rahem or Zehdan), fallopian tubes (Oieh e Rahemi), cervix (Fam e Rahem), vagina (Onog e Rahem) and ovaries (Onsa iayn, Beyzatein).The anatomical descriptions in Iranian traditional books are very similar to today's scientific findings. Discussion & Conclusion: The traditional medicine practitioners had fairly accurate knowledge about female genitalia anatomy and were able to diagnose and treat many women's diseases which resulted detailed books about Gynecological diseases.