Avicenna, or Ebn Sina, was called “the Prince of Physicians,” and was the greatest philosopher produced by the Arabs in the East. He was born in the province of Bokhara, in 980 A.D. It is related that at the age of sixteen he had learned all the science of a physician. Having cured Prince Nouh of a serious malady, he became a court favourite. After travelling for a while he composed his great work, the Canon of Medicine, by which his name was made famous both in Asia and Europe for several centuries. In the midst of the troubles of an adventurous life, he wrote a hundred gigantic books, the greatest of which was the Al-Schefà.
Ishak Ben Soleiman (830-940) wrote on dietetics, and is said to have been the first to introduce senna.
Serapion the Younger (about 1070). His work, De Simplicibus Medicamentis, was published in Latin at Milan in 1473.
Mesue the younger (about 1015) was a pupil of Avicenna, and physician to the court at Cairo. He rendered great services to pharmacy by teaching the method of preparing extracts from medicinal plants.
Albucasis was a skilful Arab physician, who wrote a work on surgery, entitled Al Tassrif, which contains much ingenious matter on the appliances of practical surgery. He died at Cordova about 1106. His work treats of the application of the actual cautery, so much employed by the Arabs, of ligation of arteries in continuity, of the danger of amputating above the knee or elbow, of stitching the bowel with threads scraped from the intestinal coat, operations for hare-lip and cataract, and fistula by cutting, ligature and cautery. He advised the use of silver catheters as now employed, in place of the copper ones used previously. He recommended anatomy as a valuable aid to surgery.[713]
Avenzoar, one of the most famous of Arabian physicians, was born near Seville in the latter part of the twelfth century. He was instructed in medicine by his father, whose family had long been connected with the healing art. He was the rational improver of Arabian medicine by the rejection of useless theories, and asserted for medicine a place among the advancing sciences of observation. He made it a constant practice to analyse the medicines he used, so that he might acquaint himself with their exact composition. He was loaded with favours by the prince of Morocco, and died at the age of ninety-two in A.D. 1262.
Ebn Albaithar (died about 1197) was a Moorish Spaniard, renowned for his medical and botanical science. He traversed many regions of the west of Africa and Asia to enlarge his botanical knowledge. He passed some years at the court of Saladin, and wrote on the Virtues of Plants, and on poisons, metals, and animals.
Averroes, or Ebn Rosch, was born at Cordova in 1126. He learned theology, philosophy, and medicine from the great teachers of his time. He was the greatest Arabian inquirer in the West, as Avicenna was in the East. He exercised the greatest influence both in his own and succeeding ages. He has been called “the Mohammedan Spinoza,” having been a religious freethinker. The study of Aristotle awakened in him a species of pantheism. He was more a philosopher than a physician, but as he had made important observations in medicine, he deserves a place amongst the heroes of the healing art. He was bitterly persecuted amongst his co-religionists for treating the Koran as a merely human work. He taught that the small-pox never attacks the same person more than once. In practice he held very rational views of the action of remedies, and taught that the work of the doctor was chiefly to apply general principles to individual cases. He wrote commentaries on Aristotle so famous as to have gained him the name of “the Commentator.” He expounded the Republic of Plato. He was a most voluminous writer, and was considered by his contemporaries and by our schoolmen as a prodigy of science.[714]
There is a very interesting account of the Indian physicians at the court of Baghdad in a translation made from a MS. in the Rich collection in the British Museum.[715] The history is from the work of Ibn Abu Usaibiâh, who lived at the beginning of the thirteenth century of our era.
Kankah the Indian was a great philosopher as well as a physician; he investigated the properties of medicines “and the composition of the heavenly bodies” (!).