History of islamic medicine

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Great Names In Islamic MedicineAL-RAZI (865 - 930)Al-Razi (Latinised as Rhazes) was born in the Iranian City of Rayy in 865. He is best remembered for his writings.

The most sought after of all his compositions was The Comprehensive Book on Medicine (Kitab al-Hawi fi al-tibb). This was a large notebook into which he detailed clinical cases from his own experience together with extracts from earlier authors on diseases and their management. The Hawi was translated into Latin in 1279 under the title Continens.

Even more influential in Europe was al-Razi's Book of Medicine Dedicated to Mansur. This is a short general textbook on medicine, composed of ten chapters, which he had dedicated to the Samanid prince Abu Salih al-Mansur ibn Ishaq, governor of Rayy. The treatise was translated into Latin (d. 1187) and was known as Liber ad Almansoris. It became one of the most widely read medieval medical manuals in Europe.

A third treatise by al-Razi that was also influential in Europe was his book on smallpox and measles (Kitab fi al-jadari wa-al-hasbah). Though this was not the earliest monograph on the subject, that honour goes to Thabit ibn Qurrah, al-Razi's treatise on smallpox and measles was the more influential and was twice translated into Latin in the 18th century. Al-Razi was as great a philosopher and alchemist as he was a physician.

IBN SINA (980-1037)Of all Islamic physicians, Abu `Ali al-Husayn ibn `Abd Allah ibn Sina, Latinised as Avicenna, is undoubtedly the most well known. Like al-Razi, Ibn Sina was a great polymath. He was born in 980 in Central Asia and travelled widely in the eastern Islamic lands, composing nearly 270 different treatises. According to his autobiography, Ibn Sina was already practicing as a doctor at the age of 16. By the time he died in 1037 he was known as one of the greatest philosophers in Islam and, in medicine, was so highly regarded that he was compared to Galen.


 Ibn Sina's magnum opus by which he was known East and West is the Kitab al-Qanun fi al-tibb or Canon of Medicine. The Canon is a comprehensive Arabic encyclopaedia consisting of five books each dealing with an aspect of medical practice, such as general medicine or listing drugs. 

This book was well before its time in describing some concepts that are still adhered to today. For example, it advised surgeons to treat cancer in its earliest stages, ensuring the removal of all the diseased tissue; it discusses the surgical use of oral anaesthetics; it recommended the testing of a new drug on animals and humans prior to general use.

The Canon was known to Europeans through the Latin translations of Gerard of Cremona and Andrea Alpago and remained in use in medical schools at Louvain and Montpellier until the 17th century. In the words of Sir William Osler, the Canon has remained "a medical bible for a longer time than any other work".

 

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