Hospitals were established at Damascus for lepers, the poor, the blind, and the sick, under the rule of the Caliph Walid.
Paper is an Arabic invention. True, it has been made from silk from the remotest ages in China, but by the Arabs it was first made at Samarcand, A.D. 649; and cotton paper, such as we use now, was made at Mecca, A.D. 706. The art was soon afterwards introduced by the Arabs into Spain, where it was brought to the highest perfection.[709] Gunpowder was known to the Arabs a hundred years before Europeans mention it.[710] The compass was used by them nearly two centuries before the Italians and French used it. The number of Arabic inventions which we unsuspectingly enjoy, without being aware of their origin, is prodigious. Could we bring to light the literary treasures of the Escurial, we should know something of the industrious host of Arabians who have done so much for the learning of the Western world, and whose names and deeds have received from us no recognition. Their historical, geographical, and scientific dictionaries and histories would alone entitle them to the gratitude of an age which would know how to appreciate them.
Sismondi says that “Medicine and philosophy had even a greater number of historians than the other sciences; and all these different works were embodied in the historical dictionary of sciences compiled by Mohammed-Aba-Abdallah, of Granada.”
The Great Arabian Physicians.
Honain, a Christian physician, flourished at Baghdad in the middle of the ninth century. He travelled in Greece that he might perfect himself in the language, and he read the works of all the great writers of that country. On his return to Baghdad he was invited by the Caliph to undertake the translation of the Greek authors. His best known translation is The Aphorisms of Hippocrates with the Commentaries of Galen. He wrote on midwifery, and was a good oculist.
Serapion the Elder (of Damascus), who flourished in the ninth century, was a Syrian physician, of whom little or nothing is known except that he wrote two works, one of which is in the Bodleian in MS., entitled Aphorismi magni momenti de Medicina Practica. The other is entitled Kunnásh, and has been translated into Latin.
The classical period of Arabian medicine begins with—
Rhazes, “the Arabic Galen,” whose real name was Abú Becr Mohammed Ibn Zacaríyá Ar-Razi, was born at Rai, near Chorásán, probably about the middle of the ninth century after Christ. His famous work, On the Small Pox and Measles, was translated from the original Arabic into Syriac, and from that language into Greek. This is the first extant medical treatise in which the small-pox is certainly mentioned.[711] This famous book has been published in various languages about thirty-five times; a greater number of editions, says Dr. Greenhill, than almost any other ancient medical treatise has passed through. He was skilled in philosophy, astronomy, and music, as well as in medicine, which he began to study when he was forty years old. He became one of the most celebrated physicians of his time, and was appointed physician to the hospital at Rai, and afterwards to that of Baghdad, where he became so famous as a teacher that pupils flocked to him from all parts. He afterwards resided at the court of Cordova. He died at an advanced age about A.D. 932. More than two hundred titles of his works have been preserved; but his small-pox treatise is the only one which has been published in the original Arabic. It is a remarkable and a very interesting fact that he explained the nature of the small-pox and measles by the theory of fermentation.[712]
The largest work of Rhazes is Al-Háwí, or the Comprehensive book, commonly called “Continens.” In the Latin translation this fills two folio volumes. Although little more than a sort of medical commonplace book, it has a value in that it has preserved for us many fragments from the works of ancient physicians which we should not otherwise have possessed. Another important work of Rhazes is the Ketábu-l-Mansúri, or Liber ad Almansorem, so called from being dedicated to Mansur, prince of Chorásán. It was intended to instruct the physician in everything which it was necessary for him to know. It is chiefly a compilation, but was a popular text-book in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Rhazes taught the external use of arsenic, mercurial ointments, and sulphate of copper, and the internal use of brandy, nitre, borax, coral, and gems.
Ali Ben el Abbas (Ali Abbas), who lived in the latter part of the tenth century, was a Persian physician, who wrote a medical text book, entitled the Royal Book. Up to the time of Avicenna, this was the standard authority on medicine amongst the Arabs, and was several times translated into Latin. In the theory of medicine and partly in its practice he followed the Greeks, but imitated the use of the excellent materia medica of the Arabs. He wrote also on ophthalmology and obstetrics.