Indtroduction

• The Islamic Golden Age, spanning the 8th to the 15thCenturies, saw many great advances in science, as Islamic scholars gathered knowledge from across the known world and added their own findings.

• The Arabic world had had previous contact with Greek culture, including medicine, before Muhammad's founding of Islam.

• Over several hundred years, Islam extended into Africa, Spain and part of France. There were three caliphates: in Baghdad, in Cordova (Spain) and in Cairo.

Origin

• One of these important fields was Islamic medicine, which saw medical practice begin to resemble our modern systems. Certainly, this period of the history of medicine was centuries ahead of Europe, still embedded in the Dark Ages.

• Initially, in the early days of Islam, there was some debate about whether Islamic physicians should use Greek, Chinese and Indian medical techniques, seen by many as pagan. After intense debate, the Islamic physicians were given free rein to study and adopt any techniques they wished.

Arabic medicine• Although physicians often continued to

prepare their own medications, pharmacy became a separate profession.

• The important role of the Arabists in developing modern chemistry is remembered in the significant number of current terms derived from Arabic: alkali, alcohol, elixir, syrup.

Influence of Religion

• Central to Islamic medicine was belief in the Qur'an and Hadiths, which stated that Muslims had a duty to care for the sick and this was often referred to as "Medicine of the Prophet." According to the sayings of the Prophet Muhammed, he believed that Allah had sent a cure for every ailment and that it was the duty of Muslims to take care of the body and spirit. This certainly falls under the remit of improving the quality of healthcare and ensuring that there is access for all, with many of the Hadiths laying down guidelines for a holistic approach to health.

Geographical Background• The Arab world (Arabic: العربي الوطن :al-ʿālam al-ʿarabī, formally: Arabic العالم

العربية :al-wațan al-ʿarabī), also known as the Arab Nation(Arabic العربي -al األمةʾummah al-ʿarabīah), consists of the Arabic-speaking countries and populations of the 22 Arab Leaguecountries.[1]

• The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 countries and territories of the Arab League stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast.[1] It has a combined population of around 422 million people, with over half under 25 years of age.[2]

• A map of the Arab world. This is based on thestandard territorial definition of the Arab world, which comprises the states of the Arab League plus Western Sahara. Comoros is not shown.

• The sentiment of Arab nationalism arose in the second half of the 19th century along with other nationalist movements within the Ottoman Empire. The Arab League was formed in 1945 to represent the interests of the Arabs, and especially to pursue the political unification of the Arab countries, a project known as Pan-Arabism.

Brief History• During the first five centuries of the Christian era, the barbarian

invasions of Europe, the disasters and plagues, and the anti-Hellenism of the Christian Church led to the loss of much of the Greek and Roman writings. In the seventh century the expansion of the Arabs contributed to the preservation of the classical learning still extant.

• The sentiment of Arab nationalism arose in the second half of the 19th century along with other nationalist movements within the Ottoman Empire. The Arab League was formed in 1945 to represent the interests of the Arabs, and especially to pursue the political unification of the Arab countries, a project known as Pan-Arabism.

Belief towards Diseases

• The attitude of Islam toward the origin of disease was similar to the Judaeo-Christian idea in that Allah caused illness as punishment for a person's sins. The Islamic religion considered that there was an afterlife: the soul that remained in the human body after death was reawakened and rewarded appropriately in paradise. Because of this, dissection of human body was forbidden and Arabic physicians relied on Galen for their anatomical knowledge.

Methods of Prognosis,Treatment

• The practitioners used essentially the same methods as the Greeks and Romans. Diagnosis was based on the patient's behaviour, the excretions, the character and location of pain, the properties of the pulse. Even the influence of the stars over health and disease was taken into consideration. Because of the importance given on examining urine, the half-filled urine flask became a symbol of the physician. The urine's colour, consistency, sediments, smell and taste helped to determine what was wrong with a patient, to predict his prognosis and to guide treatment.

• Since surgery was condemned, much of the cutting, cauterizing, bandaging and bleeding was done by untrained doctors and charlatans. Nevertheless, some physicians practiced surgery and wrote about it. The most common surgical technique was cauterization.

• A characteristic of Arabist therapy was the wide employment of drugs of all kinds. New medications, including mineral as well as vegetable and animal substances, were added to materia medica. Some of these substances may have originated in China or India.

Contributors to Arab Medicine

• In the early years of Islam, medical practice was carried on by Christian and Jewish physicians. Muslim physicians came upon the scene when Alexandria, Gundishapur and other cities became centres of Muslim intellectual life.

• One of the most famous healers in the eastern caliphate was the Persian Rhazes (abu-Bakr Muhammad ibn-Zakariya al-Razi, 850-923?).

• A large part of his work was a compilation of the theories of Hippocrates, Galen and others. Through the clarity of his writings and his influence over students and physicians he brought much of Greek medicine to the Arabic world.

• The Father of Arabicic Medicine - Al Razi (rhazes)• Arabic Medicine - Ibn Sina, the Great Polymath• Al Kindi - The Documenter of Islamic Medicine• Ibn Al Nafis and the Respiratory System• Serapion, a Syriac Christian, wrote a detailed treatise

about pharmacology in the 9th Century,• Al Tabari, (810 - 855) wrote a book known as 'The

Paradise of Wisdom,' in 850, which was based largely upon the earlier works of Galen and Hippocrates

• The most influential Arabic contributor to medicine was Avicenna (abu-Ali al-Husayn ibn-Sina, 980-1037), also called "the prince of physicians" and "the flower of Arabic culture”.

• His main contribution in medicine was as a compiler and commentator. The most renowned of his approximately one hundred books was "The Canon" (Al-Qanum). Considered a "medical bible", Avicenna's "Canon" was for centuries the standard if not the only accepted text-book of general medicine. Much of it was derived from classical Greek sources, of which even the worst were better than anything that the Europe of the time had to offer. The book had five sections: theoretical medicine, simple remedies, and their treatment, general illness and pharmacology .

• The most famous Jewish physician in Arabic medicine was Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon, 1135-1204). Born in Cordova, he emigrated in Morocco together with other Jews when the Muslim dynasty of the Almohades began to persecute nonbelievers. He later went to Palestine and then to Cairo where financial needs forced him to enter medicine as a career

Hygiene

• The general health of the population and its hygienic conditions probably were the same in Latin Europe and in the Muslim world. Medical treatises of the era reveal a concern with the same diseases, acute and chronic. The Arabic descriptions of epidemics marked by skin eruptions may indicate that such plagues were as prevalent in the world of Islam as in Christian countries.

Arab Middle age Hospitals

• The best-known of the great hospitals in the Middle Ages were at Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo. In Baghdad clinical reports of cases were collected and preserved for teaching. The hospital and medical school at Damascus had elegant rooms and an extensive library.

• Probably the largest was the Mansur Hospital in Cairo, founded in the thirteenth century. Separate sections were built for different diseases, such as fevers, eye conditions, diarrhea, wounds and female disorders

• The major contribution of the Islamic Age to the history of medicine was the establishment of hospitals, paid for by the charitable donations known as Zakat tax. There is evidence that these hospitals were in existence by the 8th Century and they were soon widespread across the Islamic world, with accounts and inventories providing evidence of at least 30.

• These hospitals, as well as providing care to the sick on site, sent physicians and midwives into the poorer, rural areas, and also provided a place for physicians and other staff to study and research. These hospitals varied in role, some aimed at serving the general population, with others providing specific services, such as the care of lepers, the disabled and the infirm.

Arab Medical Education

• The system of educating physicians was well structured, usually on a tutorage basis, and the reputation of the individual physicians in certain areas ensured that students would travel from city to city to learn with the best. In addition, the Islamic physicians were meticulous with their recordkeeping, partly as a way to spread and share knowledge, but also to provide notes for peer review in case the physician was accused of malpractice.

Conclusion

• Whilst the Age of Islam was a time of intellectualism and scientific, social and philosophical advances, the greatest contribution to the world was Islamic medicine. The Islamic scholars gathered vast amounts of information, from around the known world, adding their own observations and developing techniques and procedures that would form the basis of modern medicine. In the history of medicine, Islamic medicine stands out as the period of greatest advance, certainly before the technology of the Twentieth Century.

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