Antall József szerk.: Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 5. (Budapest, 1972)
Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts (Guide for the Exhibition)
Hippocrates (460-377 B. C.), the Father of Medicine, is portrayed in classi- 15 cal style in the statue made by an unknown French sculptor in the 18th century (Fig- 9-)The vessels and medical instruments showing the development of Roman medicine are all finds from Pannónia. The glass vessels contained different oils and beauty preparations. An especially precious find is a balm-container which is 50 cm. high. The Romans who had lived in Pannónia imported their glass vessels from Italy or the glassworks of the Rhineland. The vessels deriving from the 2nd and 3rd centuries A. D. were also produced in those places. The medical instruments were excavated in Aquincum. The bronze scalpel is especially noteworthy; its shape has hardly changed during the past eighteen centuries (Fig. 10.). 4. Islam and Public Health The two basic components of the world of Islam are the Arabic language and the Muslim religion. In their great age the territory they occupied reached from India to Spain. They preserved the culture of the peoples which came under their rule : the culture of the Persians, Arameans, Copts, Jews and that of the Central Asian peoples. Arabic medical writings to some extent preserved and developed classical Greek medicine. The Nestorian Christian physicians had a great influence on Arabic medicine. All that combined with Muslim spirit brought about a specific synthesis. Islamic culture flourished in the 8th-i ith centuries. The sacred book of Islam, the Koran contained also orders referring to washing, fasting, etc. This is why the enlarged photo representing a page from the Koran, a detail of a chapter (sura) referring to the affairs of health is exhibited on the wall of the exhibition hall dealing with this period. (Plate II.) Among the greatest personalities of Arabic medicine mention should be made of Avicenna (980-1037, in Arabic called Abu Ali Húsain ihn Abdullah ihn Sind). His encyclopaedia "Canon Medicinae" composed in five volumes is a masterpiece of Arabic scholasticism. This work, the encyclopaedia of contemporary medicine, served as a main textbook until the seventeenth century. The exhibited copy was published in 1658 in Loųvain (Leųven, Löwen). The coloured slide represents an instructive picture from a 15th century codex "Cyrurgia cum formis instrumentorum" - preserved in the University Library of Corna the Latin translation of Albucasis' (cca. 912-1013) 'On Surgery...'representing the extension of vertebrae. Furthermore we present some Arabic healthprotecting amulets and vessels and jars for carrying water (Fig. 11.).
