Medieval Muslims’
acceptance of new ideas and their preservation of ancient texts helped advance medicine during that period. They added to ancient medical ideas and techniques, developed medical sciences and related matters, and promoted medical knowledge in areas such as surgery and understanding the human body, despite the lack of Many Western researchers acknowledge the influence of Muslims on medicine, considering that they had no independent impact on ancient Roman and Greek medicine. George Sarton objected to saying that the Arabs were nothing but a skilled transfer of science and did not add to it, saying: “Some Westerners, who underestimate what the East has brought to civilization, declare that the Arabs and Muslims transferred the ancient sciences, and did not add anything to it... This opinion is wrong.. If the treasures of Greek wisdom had not been transmitted to us, and had it not been for the important additions of the Arabs, the progress of civilization would have stopped for a few centuries...»
Medical books
The book Firdaws al-Hikma, written by Ibn Rabbin al-Tabari in seven volumes around 860 AD, was the first medical encyclopedia in Arabic. His encyclopedia also discussed the influence of Sushruta and Chanakya on medicine, including psychotherapy.
Muhammad bin Zakariya Al-Razi wrote his book Al-Hawi on Medicine in the ninth century AD, and his books Al-Jami Al-Kabir had its own fame, because Al-Razi recorded in it clinical cases that Al-Razi himself treated, and in it he provided very useful records on various diseases. He published it in 23 volumes, each of which explains parts of the body or specific diseases, which he classified and grouped according to his understanding. Most European universities continued to use Al-Hawi as an important medical reference until the seventeenth century. Al-Razi also wrote his book Al-Mansoori, which he wrote for the ruler of Ray, Mansour bin Ishaq bin Ahmed, which contained ten articles based mainly on Greek sciences, which medical students relied on for centuries. Al-Razi has another book called The Medicine of Kings, in which he dealt with how to treat and prevent diseases and ailments by following diets. It is believed that he wrote this book for the elite of the people who were known to be greedy, and they often suffered from stomach diseases. Among the other works, a treatise on the causes of colds in the spring, in which Al-Razi explained the causes of colds when smelling roses in the spring.
It was also the book of the entire medical industry known as the royal book of Ali bin Abbas Al-Majusi, which some scholars prepared as the founder of anatomical physiology, which contained twenty articles on medical theories, healthy foods, medicinal herbs, and gynecology. It is also one of the first medical books to devote a section to talk about skin diseases. Also among the important books is The Canon of Medicine, which was divided into five volumes: the first volume contained a compendium of medical principles, the second a reference to narcotic drugs, the third describes diseases of individual organs, the fourth discusses traditional diseases and has a section for preventive health measures, and the fifth contains prescriptions for drugs bundled. So, the law had great influence in medical schools and later medical authors.
Muslim doctors also paid attention to what is now known as preventive medicine, and they had books concerned with how to maintain health, by preserving the cleanliness of the surrounding environment, proper nutrition, and exercising to preserve the body. Perhaps the most famous of them is Ibn Batlan’s book, The Health Calendar, which was popular in medieval Europe, and in which it demonstrates the influence of Arab culture on the beginnings of modern European civilization. In addition to books that dealt with other medical topics such as the health of the elderly, such as Ibn Al-Jazzar’s Book of Medicine of Sheikhs, and Sleep Disorders, as well as a book on Forgetting and Methods of Strengthening Memory by Ibn Al-Jazzar.
Europe has benefited from translations of Islamic medical books by translators such as Gerardo of Cremony, who translated the surgery part of Al-Zahrawi’s Al-Tasrif book into Latin, and it was used since then in European medical schools for centuries, and they continued to issue editions of it until about 1770. Constantine also translated The African book The traveler's provision and the present's food by Ibn Al-Jazzar, the book of law in medicine by Ibn Sina, and the book Al-Jami Al-Kabir by Al-Razi.
Some Muslim medical literature, such as Ibn Sina's Kitab al-Qanun fi al-Tibb, al-Hawi fi al-Tibb by al-Razi, and al-Tasrif for those who were unable to compose by al-Zahrawi, continued to be taught in European universities until the eighteenth century.
Muslims also presented works in the field of medical ethics, and Al-Rahawi's book The Doctor's Literature is the oldest Arab work in the field of medical ethics, in which it relied on the works of Hippocrates and Galen. In his book, Al-Rahawi described physicians as “the shepherds of the soul and body,” and wrote twenty chapters in it on various titles related to medical ethics. Al-Razi was also interested in medical ethics, in which he wrote a book entitled Ethics of the Doctor. In this book, Al-Razi wrote about the importance of the patient's morale. He also thought that not only was it necessary for a physician to be skilled in his field, but that he should be a role model. His thoughts on medical ethics were divided into three concepts: the doctor's responsibility to his patients, his responsibility to himself, and the patient's responsibility to the doctor.
diagnoses of illnesses
It has been proven from the writings of Muslim physicians that they were not only skilled in diagnosing diseases, in which they relied on a physical examination of the body, palpation of the pulse, monitoring of urine, asking the patient what he was complaining about, checking the color of the skin, and checking on exhalation and inhalation.
They also excelled in the art of differentiating between diseases. For example, Ibn Sina was able to differentiate between acute and secondary meningitis, and between renal and intestinal colic. Al-Razi accurately described the difference between smallpox and measles due to the similarity of the first stages of the two diseases, and recorded it in his book “A Treatise on Smallpox and Measles.” Ibn Zuhr also described an abscess of the sacrum and reflux and dry pericarditis. Muslim doctors also linked the shape of nails with tuberculosis. Ibn Sina is credited with finding out about the possibility of disease transmission through the air, his insightful views on attributing some diseases to psychological conditions, his recommendation to use forceps in deliveries complicated by fetal distress, and his distinction between facial nerve paralysis caused by a brain disease and caused by a local cause. He described guinea worm infection and trigeminal neuralgia.
Muslims also prescribed a cure for jaundice and yellow air, and used opium in various amounts to treat madness. They also prescribed pouring cold water to stop the bleeding, and treated a dislocated shoulder by abruptly restoring it. They attributed the cause of hemorrhoids to the contraction of the stomach, and advised eating plant foods as a treatment for it.
Ibn Sina discovered hookworm disease and wrote about it in the section on intestinal worms in his book Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb, and called it the roundworm. He also described elephantiasis and how it spreads in the body, and Persian fire disease. Ibn Rabin al-Tabari discovered the insect that causes scabies and described it in his book The Hippocratic Treatment. Al-Zahrawi was also the first to describe an ectopic pregnancy, in addition to describing the hereditary nature of haemophilia.
They also paid attention to psychological treatment. Al-Razi divided the science of treatment into two parts: physical treatment and spiritual treatment. Physical therapy is concerned with organic diseases, while spiritual therapy is concerned with the soul itself. He believed that for a doctor to understand the nature of the body, he needed to be familiar with the medical and spiritual knowledge of the body.
bimaristans
Hospitals developed at the beginning of the Islamic era, and they called it Bimaristan, a Persian word meaning “house of the sick.” The idea of hospitals as places for the treatment of the sick arose at the hands of the first caliphs. The courtyard of the Prophet's Mosque in Medina during the reign of the Prophet Muhammad is the first hospital in Islam. This was during the Battle of the Trench, when the Prophet ordered a tent to be erected in which to treat the wounded. Over time, the caliphs and rulers expanded the bimaristans to include doctors and pharmacists.
The Umayyad caliph Al-Walid bin Abdul-Malik built the first bimaristan in Damascus in 88 AH / 707 AD. The bimaristan had a staff of paid doctors and was well equipped. It used to treat blind people, lepers and other disabled people, as leprosy patients were isolated from the rest of the patients. Some believed that the Bimaristan was only a place to isolate the lepers, because they used to gather there. As for the first real Islamic hospital, it was built during the reign of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, when the caliph called on the doctor Jibril bin Bakhtishu' to build a new bimaristan in Baghdad. This bimaristan quickly achieved its fame, and it was the reason for the spread of bimaristans in Baghdad.
Features of bimaristans
With the development of bimaristans in the Islamic era, there were special advantages for them, as they were based on sciences, there was no place for divination in them, and they treated all people regardless of their race, religion, nationality, or gender. And the documents of the Islamic endowment indicate that no one was ever expelled from it, and the ultimate goal of the workers was to help the sick. There was no specified time after which the patient would be expelled from the Bimaristan; As the endowment documents prove that patients had the right to remain in bimaristans until they fully recovered. There were two equal departments, one for men and one for women. It had separate departments for mental illness, communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases, surgery, pharmacy, and ophthalmology, and each department had a team of same-sex doctors and nurses. Each bimaristan has a classroom, kitchen, pharmacy, library, mosque, and sometimes a church for Christian patients. There were usually some entertainment and musical activities to entertain the patients.
The bimaristans were not only places of treatment, but also served as medical schools for the education and training of medical students. Basic sciences were taught by private tutors. Islamic bimaristans were the first hospitals to keep written records of patients' condition and treatment. The students were responsible for recording the patients' condition, under the supervision of the doctors.
During the Abbasid Caliphate, a medical license was mandatory. In the year 931 AD, Caliph Al-Muqtadir learned of the death of a person as a result of a medical error. So he ordered Sinan bin Thabit bin Qurra to test the doctors and prevent those whom he saw as ineligible. Since then, examinations have become necessary, and only those qualified to practice medicine.
the pharmacy
The Arabs were also interested in translating medical literature, they were also interested in translating books that dealt with herbal medicine, such as the works of Dioscorides, and even traveled to Egypt describing their plants and their properties, and they had their books describing plants, such as the works of Ibn al-Bitar and Dawood of Antioch, and Ibn al-Talmidh, the author of the great book Al-Aqrabazin, which remained an essential reference in the science of making medicine. In bimaristans in the era of Islamic civilization.
The emergence of pharmacology as a well-defined science and an independent profession was at the beginning of the ninth century at the hands of Islamic scholars. Al-Biruni mentioned that “pharmacy has become linguistically independent of medicine, like the separation of prosody from poetry, and logic from philosophy, because it is an auxiliary factor for medicine rather than being affiliated with it.” The profession was also highly regulated, so pharmacists had no right to practice the profession except after obtaining a license, and their names were registered in special schedules for pharmacists, and each city had a special inspector for pharmacies and the preparation of medicines.
Medieval Muslim physicians used plants and natural substances as a form of remedy or medicine and as a source of medicinal drugs including hypnotic poppy and cannabis. Before Islam in the Arabian Peninsula, poppy and cannabis were not known, as Muslims knew cannabis coming from India in the ninth century, after they were acquainted with the culture and medical literature of the Persians and Greeks. They also quoted Dioscorides, whom they considered the greatest ancient botanists, that he recommended cannabis seeds to soothe jaw pain and its juice for earaches. From the year 800 and for the next two centuries, the poppy was used exclusively for medicinal purposes. However, doses often exceeded medical need. As for the poppy, John Ben Massawyeh described it to relieve the pain of gallstone attacks, fever, indigestion, eye, headache, toothaches, pleurisy, and as a hypnotic. Despite the medicinal benefits of poppy, Ibn Rabbin al-Tabari warned that the extract of poppy leaves is fatal, and that the extract of opium is poisonous. Muslims also extracted new medicines from senna, camphor, sandalwood, rhubarb, musk, vomit nut, tamarind, bitter melon, wolf's strangle and others.
Anesthetics and antiseptics
Anesthesia and antiseptics were important in surgery for ancient Muslim physicians. Before the development of anesthetics and antiseptics, surgery was limited to fractures, dislocations and amputations. Muslim doctors tried to prevent infection when performing surgeries, so they washed the patient before and after surgery, and they used to clean the place with alcohol, rose oils, or a mixture of them, or with saline or vinegar, which are substances that have antiseptic properties. They also used various herbs and resins, including frankincense, myrrh and cinnamon, to prevent infection, but it is not known exactly how effective these substances are in preventing poisoning. Opium has been known as a pain reliever since ancient times. Other drugs, such as black anesthesia, hemlock, wolfberry, and lettuce seeds, were also used to treat pain. Some of these drugs, especially opium, caused drowsiness, and some modern scholars have asserted that they were used to render a person unconscious before surgery. Muslim physicians also used mercuric chloride to disinfect wounds.