Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 18-19. (Budapest, 2000)

Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts - Guide to the Exhibition

The sacred book of Islam, the Koran, contains detailed orders how a believer should run his or her life. Some of these rules about washing and fasting refer simply to hygiene, but others are clearly about sanitary matters. The enlarged photo above the show-case, illustrates the latter. It is an extract from a sura (chapter) of the Koran, and regulates sanitary matters. The most famous representative of Muslim medicine was probably Avicenna (Abu Ali al-Husain ibn Abdullah ibn Sina, 979-1037). Avicenna was born in Bukhara and spent all his life in the Eastern regions of the Muslim world. He studied the Koran, Arabic and Greek classics, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy and medicine in Bukhara. Later, he worked as court physician and scientific adviser to many of the rulers of Eastern cities, like Khwarazm, Karzwin, Hamadan and Isfahan. His most influential work, composed in five books, the Canon Medicinae by its Latin name, was a masterpiece of Arabic science. This work is actually an encyclopaedia of contemporary medicine, which combines the doctrines of Hippocrates and Galen, the principles of Aristotle with the accurate clinical observations of a couple of Muslim physicians, like e.g. those of the famous Rhazes (ar-Razi) (865-d.c.923). Avicenna's work was poorly translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona (1114-1187), but it was still used as a major textbook in European universities until the middle of the seventeenth century and even the Arabic text itself was edited at Rome as late as in 1593. The exhibited copy was published in 1658 at Loųvain. The coloured slide shows a picture from a 14th-century codex the De Chyrurgia (On surgery); (the original one is in the possession of the University Library of Budapest). This book is a Latin translation of the manual of another prominent Arab physician and surgeon, Abulcasis (Abu-l-Quasim, or Khalaf ibn al-Abbas uz-Zahrawi) (c. 917-1009). Abulcasis lived in Cordoba, as the physician to the Caliph Abdur Rahman III (912-961). The codex, which is actually a manual, is thoroughly illustrated with drawings showing surgical instruments, curing and operation methods, like e.g. one about the extension of the vertebrae. This text is an extract from the third part of his main work, the Kitab at-Tasrif li-man' ajiza (On the application of medical knowledge), which was one of the biggest encyclopaedic book in the Middle Ages. This definitely long piece of work which contains thirty maqalats (tracts), where the first is about physiology, the second is on nosology and the third is on surgery. His works were translated into Latin also by Gerard of Cremona, and circulated in forms of codices under various titles. The many printed editions from the late 16th up to the 18th century show that his book, and especially its second part, had been an extremely useful manual for all practicing doctors in Europe for quite a long time. The first printed edition of his texts, entitled Liber theoricae nec non practicae Alsharavii appeared in Augsburg (1519), still using Cremona's threehundred years old translation. His tracts on surgery, entitled as Cyrurgia cum formis instrumentorum were printed at the first time at Oxford, 1778. We have also displayed a few Arabic amulets that were supposed to have health protecting effects, moreover a few vessels and jars. (No.3 and 4) 31