Avicenna's Canon — Humours and Essential Members
Avicenna's Canon — Humours and Essential Members is a Islamic / Unani — Avicenna Canon body body system as transmitted through the lineage Ibn Sīnā's al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb organises medicine through elements, temperaments, humours, faculties, and the members of the body. Book I distinguishes the three principal members—the heart, brain, and liver—from generative and auxiliary members; this entry pairs four humoral fields with six selected organ and tissue foci while stating clearly where the normalized front-view placement is editorial.. This page lists every point in the system with sourced placements and links to cross-tradition correspondences curated for The Body Spiritual.
Open in interactive explorerPrimary sources
- Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna), al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb (The Canon of Medicine), Book I (transl. O. Cameron Gruner, A Treatise on the Canon of Medicine of Avicenna, Luzac, 1930; repr. AMS Press, 1973) — Book I, Theses III–V (§§26–135 in Gruner's translation), presents temperaments, the four humours, and the classification of bodily members; §§118–123 distinguish the heart, brain, liver, generative organs, and auxiliary members.
- Peter E. Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine (Edinburgh University Press, 2007) — Historical study of Islamic medicine's Galenic and Arabic developments, including Avicenna's humoral framework and Canon reception; it supports historical context but does not supply this normalized body diagram.
Known lineage variants
- The Canon presents the heart, brain, and liver as three principal members and discusses generative and auxiliary members, but it does not prescribe one six-point normalized front-view chart. The selected six foci therefore combine three principal members with separate testes, semen, and bones anchors for the backlog's requested coverage.
- Avicenna's four humours are qualities and bodily fluids rather than four superficial patches. The sanguine, phlegmatic, bilious, and atrabilious zones below are editorial fields that make the humoral vocabulary visible; they are not claims that one humour resides only inside one outlined region.
- Testes and semen are shown as separate visual foci because the Canon distinguishes generative members from the generative material and its faculties. Their coordinates are broad lower-body projections, not claims about a single sexed anatomy or a literal semen reservoir.
- Bones are a tissue-level anchor rather than one discrete organ. The front-view midline marker represents skeletal structure as a distributed member, and all coordinates follow the convention that anatomical right is x < 0.5.
Related systems
No other systems share this tradition label.
Points
- Heart — vital member — Source of vital power
- Brain — mental and sensory member — Sensation, movement, and mental faculties
- Liver — nutritive member — Natural faculty and blood formation
- Testes — generative member — Essential generative organ
- Semen — generative material — Faculty and material of generation
- Bones — structural member — Hard tissue and bodily foundation
Frequently asked
What is Heart — vital member?
The heart is rendered as the Canon's principal vital member and the source or starting point of vital power in the Gruner translation. Its anatomical-left chest coordinate follows ordinary front-view orientation, while the visual position is an editorial normalization rather than a Canonical diagram.
What is Brain — mental and sensory member?
The brain is shown at the head as the principal member associated in the Canon with mental faculties, sensation, and movement. The midline head marker is a readable front-view projection and does not imply that the Canon supplied a measured point or modern neurological map.
What is Liver — nutritive member?
The liver is placed on anatomical-right in the upper abdomen as the Canon's nutritive or vegetative principal member and as a major site in humoral physiology. The coordinate is a broad front-view anchor, not a statement that all nutritive activity is confined to the drawn ellipse.
What is Testes — generative member?
The testis marker represents the generative member that the Canon lists alongside the principal organs in its classification of members. It is placed in the lower-body field for visual legibility, with a wide uncertainty radius that avoids turning a historical generative category into a precise modern anatomy.
What is Semen — generative material?
The semen marker separates generative material from the testicular organ so that the backlog's testes/semen distinction remains visible. Its lower-abdominal position is an editorial body projection, not a claim that the Canon treats semen as a discrete reservoir at this exact coordinate.
What is Bones — structural member?
The bones marker compresses a distributed structural tissue into one midline anchor so the visual system can show the body's hard framework beside the principal members. The wide uncertainty radius records that this is a symbolic skeletal focus rather than a single bone or organ.