Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by A. C. Wootton

It was the Caliph Almansor and his immediate successor, Haroun Al-Raschid, who between them made Bagdad a centre of study. Students and professors came thither from all parts of the then civilised world, and the Caliphs welcomed, and indeed invited, both Christians and Jews to teach there. Hospitals were established in the city, and the first public pharmacies or dispensaries were provided in Bagdad by Haroun Al-Raschid. It is on record that in A.D. 807 envoys from that monarch came to the court of Charlemagne bringing gifts of balsams, nard, ointments, drugs, and medicines.

Arabic medicine was based on the works of Hippocrates and Galen, which were for the most part translated first into Syriac, and then into Arabic. It does not come within the scope of this work to narrate or estimate the advance in medicine which may be accredited to the Arabian writers and practitioners. Medical historians do not allow that they contributed much original service to either anatomy, physiology, pathology, or surgery; but it is admitted by every student that their maintenance of scholarship through the half dozen centuries during which Europe was sunk in the most abject ignorance and superstition entitles them to the gratitude of all who have lived since. The medicine of Avicenna was perhaps much the same as that of Galen. Both were accepted by the physicians of England, France, and Germany with the slavish deference which the long burial of the critical faculties had made inevitable, and which needed the vigorous abuse of Paracelsus to quicken into activity.

Whatever may have been the case with medicine it cannot be denied that the Arabs contributed largely to the development of its ministering arts, chemistry and pharmacy. The achievements attributed to Geber in the eighth century were probably not due to any single adept. Tradition assigned the glory to him and, likely enough, if such a chemist really lived and acquired fame, other investigators who followed him for a century or two adopted the pious fraud so frequently met with in other branches of study in the early centuries of our era of attributing theories or discoveries to some venerated teacher in order to assure for them immediate acceptance. However this may be, it is not the less established that the chemistry of Geber, or of Geber and others, was in fact the fruit of Arab industry and genius.

Our language indicates to some extent what Pharmacy owes to the Arabs. Alcohol, julep, syrup, sugar, alkermes, are Arabic names; the general employment in medicine of rhubarb, senna, camphor, manna, musk, nutmegs, cloves, bezoar stones, cassia, tamarinds, reached us through them. They first distilled rose water. They first established pharmacies, and from the time of Haroun Al-Raschid there is evidence that the Government controlled the quality and prices of the medicine sold in them. Sabor-Ebn-Sahel, president of the school of Dschondisabour, was the author of the earliest pharmacopœia, which was entitled “Krabadin”; and Hassan-Ali-Ebno-Talmid of Bagdad in the tenth century, and Avicenna (Al-Hussein-Ben-Abdallah-Ebn-Sina) in the eleventh century prepared collections of formulas which were used as pharmacopœias.

It was the Arabs who raised pharmacy to its proper dignity. We do not read of any noted pharmacists among them who were not physicians, but the latter were all keen students of the materia medica, and occupied themselves largely with pharmaceutical studies. But it is evident that there was a distinct profession of pharmacy. We read of Avicenna, for example, taking refuge with an apothecary at Hamdan, and there composing some of his famous works. Elsewhere a quotation from Rhazes gives some indication of the irregular practice of medicine which has prevailed in every country and among all nations; and Sprengel quotes some translated items from various Arabic authors which show that as early as the ninth century the Government sanctioned the book of pharmaceutical formulas, compiled by Sabor-Ebn-Sahel, director of the School of Dschondisabour, already mentioned. His work was frequently imitated in later times. The first London Pharmacopœia was professedly based largely on the Formulary of Mesuë.

There is also evidence that both in civil life and in the army the pharmacists were closely supervised. Their medicines were inspected, and the prices at which they were sold to the public were controlled by law.

The development and progress of medicine and its associated sciences among the Arabs may be very concisely sketched. The flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina, the Hejira as it is called, from which the Mohommedan era is dated, corresponds in our chronology with A.D. 622. The prophet died in 632. Contemporary with him lived a priest at Alexandria named Ahrun or Aaron, who compiled from Greek writers thirty books which he called the Pandects of Physic. These were translated into Syriac and Arabic about 683 by a Jew of Bassora named Maserdschawaih-Ebn-Dschaldschal. It is not in existence, and is only known by references to it made by Rhazes. The first allusion to small-pox known to history was contained in these Pandects. Serapion quotes a number of formulas which he says were invented by Ahrun. In 772 Almansor, the Caliph who founded the city of Bagdad, brought thither from Nishabur (Dschondisabour) in Persia, a famous Christian physician named George Baktischwah, who stayed for some time, and at the request of Almansor translated into Arabic certain books on Physic. He then returned to his own land, but his son was afterwards a physician in great favour with the two succeeding Caliphs, Almohdi and Haroun Al-Raschid. Freind states that when the elder Baktischwah returned to Persia Almansor presented him with 10,000 pieces of gold, and that Al-Raschid paid the younger Baktischwah an annual salary of 10,000 drachmas. The last-named ruler also brought to Bagdad the Nestorian Christian, Jahiah-Ebn-Masawaih, who, under the name of Mesuë the Elder, retained a reputation for his formulas even up to the publication of the London Pharmacopœia.

Mesuë is noted for his opposition to the violent purgative medicines which the Greek and Roman physicians had made common, and he had much to do with the popularisation, if not with the introduction of, senna, cassia, tamarinds, sebestens, myrabolans, and jujube. He modified the effects of certain remedies by judicious combinations, as, for example, by giving violet root and lemon juice with scammony. He gave pine bark and decoction of hyssop as emetics, and recommended the pancreas of the hare as a styptic in diarrhœa.

A disciple of Mesuë’s, Ebn-Izak, added greatly to the medical resources of the Arabs by translations of the works of Hippocrates, Galen, Pliny, Paul of Egineta, and other Greek authors.