Islamic medicine - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

History of medicine

All human societies have medical beliefs that provide explanations for birth, death, and disease. Throughout history, illness has been attributed to witchcraft, demons, astral influence, or the will of the gods...

, Islamic medicine, Arabic medicine or Arabian medicine refers to medicine

Medicine

Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....

developed in the Islamic Golden Age

Islamic Golden Age

During the Islamic Golden Age philosophers, scientists and engineers of the Islamic world contributed enormously to technology and culture, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding their own inventions and innovations...

, and written in Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

, the lingua franca

Lingua franca

A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...

of Islamic civilization.

Latin translations of Arabic medical works had a significant influence on the development of medicine in the high Middle Ages

Medieval medicine

Medieval medicine in Western Europe was composed of a mixture of existing ideas from antiquity, spiritual influences and what Claude Lévi-Strauss identifies as the "shamanistic complex" and "social consensus." In this era, there was no tradition of scientific medicine, and observations went...

and early Renaissance

Medical Renaissance

Medical Renaissance is the term often applied to the period, around 1400 to 1700, of major progress in medical knowledge and a renewed interest in the ancient ideas of the Greeks and Romans. This movement was made possible by the Reformation of the Church, a decline in Conservatism, the work of...

, as did Arabic texts chronicling the medical works of earlier cultures.

Terminology

Some consider the label "Arab-Islamic" as historically inaccurate, arguing it does not appreciate the rich diversity of Eastern scholars who contributed to Islamic science in this era.

Overview

Medicine was a central part of medieval Islamic culture. Responding to circumstances of time and place, Islamic physicians and scholars developed a large and complex medical literature exploring and synthesizing the theory and practice of medicine. Islamic medicine was initially built on tradition, chiefly the theoretical and practical knowledge developed in Arabia and was known at Muhammad

Muhammad

Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...

's time, ancient Hellenistic medicine such as Unani

Unani

Unani-tibb or Unani Medicine also spelled Yunani Medicine means "Greek Medicine", and is a form of traditional medicine widely practiced in South Asia...

, ancient Indian

History of India

The history of India begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens as long as 75,000 years ago, or with earlier hominids including Homo erectus from about 500,000 years ago. The Indus Valley Civilization, which spread and flourished in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent from...

medicine such as Ayurveda

Ayurveda

Ayurveda or ayurvedic medicine is a system of traditional medicine native to India and a form of alternative medicine. In Sanskrit, words , meaning "longevity", and , meaning "knowledge" or "science". The earliest literature on Indian medical practice appeared during the Vedic period in India,...

, and the ancient Iranian Medicine

Ancient Iranian Medicine

The practice and study of medicine in Persia has a long and prolific history. The Iranian academic centers like Jundishapur University were a breeding ground for the union among great scientists from different civilizations...

of the Academy of Gundishapur

Academy of Gundishapur

The Academy of Gondishapur , also Jondishapur , was a renowned academy of learning in the city of Gundeshapur during late antiquity, the intellectual center of the Sassanid empire. It offered training in medicine, philosophy, theology and science. The faculty were versed in the Zoroastrian and...

. The works of ancient Greek

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

and Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

physicians Hippocrates

Hippocrates

Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos was an ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles , and is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine...

, Galen

Galen

Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus , better known as Galen of Pergamon , was a prominent Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher...

and Dioscorides also had a lasting impact on Islamic medicine. Ophthalmology has been described as the most successful branch of medicine researched at the time, with the works of Ibn Al-Haitham remaining an authority in the field until early modern times.

Medical ethics

The earliest surviving Arabic work on medical ethics

Medical ethics

Medical ethics is a system of moral principles that apply values and judgments to the practice of medicine. As a scholarly discipline, medical ethics encompasses its practical application in clinical settings as well as work on its history, philosophy, theology, and sociology.-History:Historically,...

is Ishaq ibn 'Ali al-Ruhawi's Adab al-Tabib ("Practical Ethics of the Physician" or "Practical Medical Deontology") and was based on the works of Hippocrates and Galen. Al-Ruhawi regarded physicians as "guardians of souls and bodies", and wrote twenty chapters on various topics related to medical ethics.

Major contributers to Muslim Medicine

Al Razi was considered the father of Islamic medicine. ‘He was regarded as the greatest physician of the Muslim World,’. but was also considered a philosopher of his time. He is known for separating the ‘science of physic’. into two different aspects: physical and spiritual. The physical dealt with the ‘physiological diseases’. while the latter dealt with the spiritual self. He felt that there was a relation between the two. Therefore, he also felt that in order to completely understand the science of the body, a doctor needed to be both a master of the physical and spiritual knowledge regarding the body.

Medicine

Medieval Islam made great contributions to the area of medicine. An important discovery made by Al-Razi was the differentiation between Smallpox and Measles. Smallpox, caused by the Variola virus, is a pustular rash disease with lesions distributed more on the extremities than the center of the body. Measles, also known as rubeola, is caused by a member of the Morbillivirus genus called the measles virus. The rash associated with the measles virus is maculopapular, starting on the head which then spreads to the whole body, lasting over a week. Before Al-Razi's discovery, these two diseases were thought to be the same single disease.

Hospitals

Many hospitals were developed during the early Islamic era. The first true Islamic hospital was built during the reign of Caliph harun-ul-Rashid. It led to the development of many other hospitals in Baghdad. One of the largest hospitals ever build was the Mansuri Hospital in Cairo .
The idea of a hospital being a place for the care of sick people was taken from the early Caliphs . The Waqf documents stated nobody should ever be turned away from medical care, and they should not be released until fully recovered. The hospital must cover all costs because the service is provided by Allah The idea of it being a place for the care of sick people was taken from the early Caliphs .

Surgery

The development and growth of hospitals in ancient Islamic society expanded the medical practice to what is currently known as surgery. Surgical procedures were known to physicians during the medieval period because of earlier texts that included descriptions of the procedures.. Surgery was uncommonly practiced by physicians and other medical affiliates due to a scarcely low success rate, even though earlier records provided favorable outcomes to certain operations.. There were many different types of procedures performed during the ancient Islamic world.

Women in medicine

IT has been written that male "guardians" such as father and husbands did not consent to their women being examined by male practitioners unless absolutely necessary. The male guardians would just assume treat their women themselves, and or have them be seen my female practitioners. The women similarly felt the same way; such is the case as pregnancy and the accompanying processes such as child birth and breastfeeding which was solely reliant upon advice given by other women. The role of women as practitioners appears in a number of works despite the male dominance within the medical field. Two female physicians from Ibn Zuhr

Ibn Zuhr

Abū Merwān ’Abdal-Malik ibn Zuhr was a Muslim physician, surgeon and teacher in Al-Andalus.He was born at Seville...

's family served the Almohad

Almohad

The Almohad Dynasty , was a Moroccan Berber-Muslim dynasty founded in the 12th century that established a Berber state in Tinmel in the Atlas Mountains in roughly 1120.The movement was started by Ibn Tumart in the Masmuda tribe, followed by Abd al-Mu'min al-Gumi between 1130 and his...

ruler Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur in the 12th century. Later in the 15th century, female surgeon

Surgeon

In medicine, a surgeon is a specialist in surgery. Surgery is a broad category of invasive medical treatment that involves the cutting of a body, whether human or animal, for a specific reason such as the removal of diseased tissue or to repair a tear or breakage...

s were illustrated for the first time in Şerafeddin Sabuncuoğlu

Serafeddin Sabuncuoglu

Sabuncuoğlu Şerafeddin was a medieval Ottoman surgeon and physician.Sabuncuoğlu was the author of the Cerrahiyyetu'l-Haniyye , the first illustrated surgical atlas, and the Mücerrebname .The Cerrahiyyetu'l-Haniyye was the first surgical atlas and the last...

's Cerrahiyyetu'l-Haniyye (Imperial Surgery). The treatment provided by women was justified to some, whom were believers, through the ideals of the "prophetic medicine" (al-tibba alnabawi) other wise known as "medicine of the prophet" (tibb al-nabi) which provided the argument that men can treat women, and women men, even if this means they have must expose their genitals in the necessary circumstances.

Notes and references

Notes
Citations
Bibliography

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External links

Islamic Medical Manuscripts at the National Library of Medicine.
Arabic Medical Manuscripts at the UCL Centre for the History of Medicine.
Islamic Culture and the Medical Arts at the National Library of Medicine.
Influence On the Historical Development of Medicine by Prof. Hamed Abdel-reheem Ead.
Al-Zahrawi (Albucasis) - A light in the Middle Ages in Europe by Dr. Sharif Kaf Al-Ghazal
Contagion - Perspectives from Pre-Modern Societies

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Terminology

Overview

Medical ethics

Major contributers to Muslim Medicine

Medicine

Hospitals

Surgery

Women in medicine

See also

Notes and references

External links