Competent critics who have studied the medical teaching of Avicenna have not been able to discover wherein its merits have justified the high esteem to which it attained. The explanation appears to be that what Avicenna lacked in originality he made up in method. The main body of his “Canon” is a judicious selection from the Greek and Latin physicians, and from Rhazes and other of his Arabic predecessors. He wrote a great deal on drugs and remedies, but it has been found impossible to identify many of the substances of his Materia Medica, as in many cases the names he gives evidently do not apply to those given by Serapion, Rhazes, and other writers. He often prescribed camphor, and alluded to several different kinds; a solution of manna was a favourite medicine with him; he regarded corrosive sublimate as the most deadly of all poisons, but used it externally; iron he had three names for, probably different compounds; he had great faith in gold, silver, and precious stones; it was probably he who introduced the silvering and gilding of pills, but his object was not to make them more pleasant to take, but to add to their medicinal effect.
Serapion the younger, and Mesuë the younger, who both lived soon after the time of Avicenna, were principally writers on Materia Medica, from whose works later authors borrowed freely.
The subsequent Arab authorities of particular note came from among the Western Saracens. Albucasis of Cordova, Avenzoar of Seville, and Averrhoes of Cordova, who are all believed to have flourished in the twelfth century, were the most celebrated. Albucasis was a great surgeon and describes the operations of his period with wonderful clearness and intelligence. Avenzoar was a physician who interested himself largely in pharmacy. He was reputed to have lived to the age of 135 and to have accumulated experience from his 20th year to the day of his death. Averrhoes knew Avenzoar personally, but was younger. He was a philosopher and somewhat of a freethinker who interested himself in medical matters. We are naturally more concerned with Avenzoar than with the others.
It is evident from the books left by Avenzoar, whose full name was Abdel-Malek-Abou-Merwan-Ebn-Zohr, that in his time the practices of medicine, surgery, and pharmacy were quite distinct in Spain, and he apologises to the higher branch of the profession for his interest in those practices which were usually left to their servants. But he states that from his youth he took delight in studying how to make syrups and electuaries, and a strong desire to know the operation of medicines and how to combine them and to extract their virtues. He writes about poisons and antidotes; has a chapter on the oil alquimesci, which Freind renders oil of eggs, and Sprengel calls oil of dates. Avenzoar says his father brought it from the East, and that it was a marvellous lithontryptic. He tells how mastic corrects scammony, and sweet almonds colocynth. He is the earliest writer to refer to the medicinal virtues of the bezoar stones. He gives a different account of the origin of these stones from that of other authors. The best, he says, comes from the East and is got from the eyes of stags. The stags eat serpents to make them strong, and at once to prevent any injury their instinct impels them to run into streams and stand in the water up to their necks. They do not drink any water. If they did they would die immediately; but standing in the stream gradually reduces the force of the poison, and then a liquor exudes by the eyelids which coagulates and forms a stone which may grow to the size of a chestnut, which ultimately falls off. According to another Arab author, Abdalanarack, the bezoar stone acquired such a celebrity in Spain that a palace in Cordova was given in exchange for one.
Moses Maimonides, the most famous Jewish scholar and theologian of the middle ages, must be mentioned among the exponents of Arab pharmacy. He was born at Cordova in 1139, and studied medicine under Averrhoes, but when he was twenty-five the then Mohammedan ruler of Spain required him to be converted or quit the kingdom. Maimonides therefore went to Cairo, and became physician to Saladin, the well-known hero of Crusade wars, who was then Sultan of Egypt. Among his duties he had to superintend the preparation of theriaca and mithridatium for the Court. The drugs for these compounds, Maimonides says, had to be brought from the East and the West at great expenditure of time and money. Consequently, “the illustrious Kadi Fakhil,” (who was apparently one of Saladin’s ministers), “whose days may God prolong, ordered the most humble of his servants in 595 (A.D. 1198) to compose a treatise, small, and showing what ought to be done immediately for a person bitten by a venomous animal.” The treatise which Maimonides composed, in obedience to this order, he called “Fakhiliteh.” This small popular manual reflects in general the pharmacy of Spain and is of no particular interest. The author considers that for all kinds of poisons and venoms the most efficacious antidote is an emerald, laid on the stomach or held in the mouth; and he notes the virtues of theriaca, mithridatium, and of bezoar. But the Kadi was thinking of poor people, and therefore more ordinary remedies were also named. A pigeon killed and cut in two pieces might be applied to painful wounds, but if this was not available warm vinegar with flour and olive oil might be substituted. Vomiting must be excited, and to destroy the virus a mixture of asafœtida, sulphur, salt, onions, mint, orange-pips, and the excrement of pigeons, ducks, or goats, compounded with honey and taken in wine, was recommended. The wisdom of Rhazes, of Avenzoar, and of other great authorities was also drawn from.
VII
FROM THE ARABS TO THE EUROPEANS
“Mediciners, like the medicines which they employ, are often useful, though the one were by birth and manners the vilest of humanity, as the others are in many cases extracted from the basest materials. Men may use the assistance of pagans and infidels in their need, and there is reason to think that one cause of their being permitted to remain on earth is that they might minister to the convenience of true Christians.”—The Archbishop of Tyre in Sir Walter Scott’s Talisman.
It would require a very long chapter and would be outside the scope of this work to attempt to trace in any detail the manner in which the ancient wisdom and science of the Greek and Latin authors, which was so marvellously preserved by the iconoclastic Arabs, was transferred, when their passion for study and research began to fail, to European nations. It has been alleged that the Crusades served to bring the attainments of the Eastern Saracens to the knowledge of the West through learning picked up by the physicians and others who accompanied the Christian armies against the Mohammedans.