Dec 71 ARABIC MEDICINE Selected Readings Campbell D: Arabian medicine and its influence on the middle ages. (Vol. 1) WZ 70 Cl 87a 1926 Withington ET: Medical history from the earliest times. (reprint of 1894 edition) pp. 138-175 WZ 40 W824m 1964 Neuberger M: History of medicine. pp. 344-394 WZ 40 N478P 1910 Browne EG: Arabian medicine, being the Fitzpatrick Lectures delivered at the Royal College of Physicians in November 1919 and November 192 0. WZ 51 B882a 1921 Elgood C: A medical history of Persia and the Eastern Caliphate from the earliest times until the year A. D. 1932. WZ 70 E41m 1951 Levey M: The medical formulary of Al-Samarqandi. QV 11 A165L 1967 Avicenna: Poem on medicine. WZ 220 A957K 1963 Rhazes: A treatise on the smallpox and measles. Tr. by W. A. Greenhill WZ 220 R468t 1848 (does not circulate) Maimonides: Two treatises on the regimen of health. WZ 220 M223B 1964 ~~"~ _______......W::..:..::Z..:....:~'---<vf,__L._4___..,;vJ......c..h~-----=--rt:i7-- ;J:o /t. a._:_J .:....::t ei:____ _________ ~---lfHrbl-~s--+- -~-'---+ --+----'--- ✓ /~~----------------+- ~ M.,( S~ l AVENZOAR 1113-1162 Born and died at Se ville. He was opposed to astrology and medical mysticism; he was a gainst the use of sophistical subtleties in the practice of medicine. His principal work is the Altersir, in which he mentions the itch-mite, and describes operations for renal calculus and for tracheotomy. 11 His memory remains that of a truly great practitioner, whose voice fell upon the deaf ears of his contemporaries and successors, but whose achievements herelded a new era of medicine free from subservience to authority. 11 ABULCASIS 936-1013 His encyclopedia of medicine and surgery, called the Altasrif, attained a more lasting reputation in Christian Europe than among the Arabs. The surgical portion of his work is particularly notable, and is founded almost entirely on Paul of Aegina. It appears J that it was Abulcasis emphasis on the cautery which led to its widespread use throughout the middle ages. MAIMONIDES Treatise on Asthma the RE- TRANSMISSION of GREEK LEARNING via TRANSLATION from ARABIC into LATIN The knowledge of Greek had disappeared from Europe between the sixth and twelfth centuries, and so the original Greek medical writings were practically unknown. Toward the end of the eleventh century (ca. 1070) at Monte Cassino near Salerno Constantinus Africanus began to translate medical works from Arabic into Latin. At Toledo in Spain toward the end of the twelfth century (ca. 1170) a school of translators developed, and the most prominent member was Gerard of Cremor1a who translated Rhazes, Abulcasis, and Avicenna, as well as Arabic versions of Hippocrates, Galen, and Aristotle. Thus, through the long and complicated route of the Byzantines, the Nestorian translators, the_Arabic compilers, and the eventual retranslations of the twelfth century, did Greek medical thought impinge again on the mind of the West. MAIMONIDES 1135-1204 Born in Cordova in a prominent Jewish family, driven out of Andalusia by religious persecution, he fled to North Africa and eventually settled in Cairo as personal physician to the Sultan, Saladin. (Richard the Lion-hearted, on his visit to Acre in 1191, had tried to secure Maimonides I services). As a religious teacher he sought to bring the foundations of belief into harmony with the dictates of reason, an attempt which is best seen in his celebrated Guide for the Perplexed. In his medical works, among them his treatises on asthma, on hemorrhoids, on poisons and their antidotes, "Maimonides shows himself an erudite and experienced physician, wholly free from mysticism, a soberly observant clinician who displayed in his therapeutics a preference for dietetic and expectant modes of treatment. 11 (Neuberger) AVERROES 1126-1198 Averroes was, and is, better known among philosophers than among physicians. His celebrated commentaries on Aristotle were intended to restore the pure original significance of the Aristotelian writings, and exerted a tremendous influence on the West. His main medical work is the Colliget, which "contains a complete system of medicine, built up on strictly logical lines; it betrays extraordinarily wide reading, a great gift for adaptation and a mastery of dialecties. In this exposition, which follows out rationalism to its extreme conclusions, medicine is made to appear as the mechanical application of immutable general principles. But there lay concealed in his system of medicine that which was at another time to become a factor of the greatest moment in the transformation of the art. He took up his cudgels in the debatable land between Aristotle and Galen, where no unanimity reigned, always in defense of the former, whereby he shook to no slight extent the foundations of the Galenic doctrinal edifice. 11 (Neuberger) the Nestorian translators In the fifth century a heretical group of Christians, the Nestorians, were driven from the Eastern Roman Empire. They founded a famous medical school at Gondisapor, in Persia. They translated much of the Greek and Roman medical texts into Syriac, and later into Arabic. The most important of these translators were Mesue ( the elder) and his pupil Hunein ( b. 809 ) who translated, from Greek into Arabic, the works of Hippocrates (IBUQRAT, in Arabic), Galen, Oribasius, Paul of Aegina, Aristotle, and Euclid. It is entirely owing to this effort that some of the works of Hippocrates and Galen are preserved to us, and that Arabic medicine is a continuation of the mainstream of medicine from the ancient world. AVICENNA 980-1027 Avicenna, born near Bokhara, Persia, was a child prodigy who could repeat the Koran by heart at age 10, and at 12 could carry on learned disputes in law and logic. He was a voluminous writer to whom scores of books are attributed, and he is the author of the most famous and widely-used medical textbook ever written, the Canon of Medicine. It is safe to say that the Canon was a medical bible for a longer period than any other work. (Osler) "The exceptionally and indeed exaggeratedly high esteem in which Avicenna was held by his contemporaries and successors rests neither upon epoch­ making discoveries nor upon practical achievements bringing any far-reaching results in their train. It is rather founded upon the fact that, with a happy knack of assimilation and wonderful talent for organization, he gave expression to the quintessence of Graeco-Arabic medicine in a comprehensive, self­ contained system, and thereby established medical thought and actions upon foundations apparently immutable. "In close adherence to Aristotelian principles, the Canon is, to the smallest details, an exposition of Galenism. It is a hierarchy of laws liberally illustrated by facts which so ingeniously rule and are subject to one another, stay and uphold one another, that admiration is compelled for the sagacity of the organizer who, with unparalleled power of systematisation, collecting his material from all sources, constructed so imposing an edifice of fallacy. 11 (Neuberger) RHAZES 850-923 Rhazes was educated at Bagdad, where he later became famous as a hospital director, teacher, and court physician. He was a man of rare attainments, who linked the knowledge of his age to achievements of the past. His work called the Continens ( Content of Medicine) contains an astounding mass of extracts (mostly literal) from Graeco-Arabic and Indian literature, from Hippocrates to Hunain, as well as numerous records from his own practice, covering the whole range of medicine. A second work, the Liber medicinalis ad Almansorem is also largely a compilation. He has acquired lasting fame chiefly through his work on smallpox and measles, which on every hand and with justice is regarded as an ornament to the medical literature of the Arabs. Rhazes takes a foremost position as a pioneer in Arabic medicine; he gathered many pupils round him, by whom he was regarded in the light of a second Galen; his works long remained a bountiful and popular source of medical knowledge, but in the sober, unprejudiced clinical habit of mind which led him to greatness he found few genuine disciples. (Adapted from Neuberger) PROLOGUE 11 Following the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, a desolation came upon the civilized world, in which the light of learning burned low, flickering almost to extinction. 11 The barbarians shattered the Roman Empire to its foundations. When Alaric sacked Rome in 410 AD, the Roman world shuddered in a titanic spasm. Many of the most important centres of learning were destroyed, and for centuries Minerva and Apollo forsook the haunts of men. 11 Another cause was the change wrought by Christianity. The brotherhood of man, the care of the body, the gospel of practical virtues formed the essence of the teaching of the Founder ---- in these the Kingdom of Heaven was to be sought; in these lay salvation. But the world was very evil, all thought that the times were waxing late, and into men's minds entered as never before a conviction of the importance of the four last things -- death, judgment, heaven and hell. One obstacle alone stood between man and his redemption, the vile body, 'this muddy vesture of decay', that so grossly wrapped the soul. As Tertullian said: Investigation since the Gospel is no longer necessary. The attitude of the early Fathers toward the body is well expressed by Jerome. 'Does your skin roughen without baths? Who is once washed in the blood of Christ needs not wash again'. In this unfavorable medium for its growth, science was simply disregarded, not in any hostile spirit, but as unnecessary. 11 A third contributing factor was the plague of the sixth century, which desolated the whole Roman world. (Mohammed the Prophet was born in Mecca in 570 A.