Islamic Medicine

History - Medicine through time - 500BC-AD1000
For the first post, I've decided to talk about Islamic Medicine, in particular the century and a half after the collapse of the Roman Empire in 500BC. 


The Muslims lived largely by the guidance of Islam's holy books, mainly the Qur'an which was believed to be the words of Allah, and later the Hadith which contained the prophet Muhammad (Born AD570)'s interpretations of the Qur'an and his 'wise sayings'. By extension, they based much of their medicine on these sacred texts which proved to be beneficial to them.


Their religion encouraged them to embrace learning, which meant that they learned from the Nestorians who were Christians that fled persecution in the West. The Nestorians brought with them medical ideas that had originated in the West from writers such as Hippocrates and Galen. Hippocrates was the author of the idea of Clinical Observation, a medical practice that involved closely watching a patient's symptoms, the Hippocratic Oath that is taken in a modified form by doctors to this day, and many other ideas contained in his collection of books called the Hippocratic Corpus (although it is known that Hippocrates did not write all of the books himself). Galen made anatomical discoveries that were far past his age, and some of his works, such as On Anatomical Procedures were brought back into the West after being translated from Arabic and may not have been preserved had the Muslims not preserved them.

When Muhammad died in AD632, caliphs ruled the Islamic world and they spread their ideas, sometimes by force. They expanded the Muslim Empire and by AD1000 it stretched from Spain to the River Indus. The caliphs became rich and build beautiful cities like Cairo and Baghdad, and built schools and universities because education was important to the society. They also built mosques and public baths because the Qur’an said that hygiene was important. The success of the Muslims is important because they were the ones who had the knowledge of the Greeks and Romans, so they spread their ideas all over their empire.

Now, for some examples of the medicine that they actually used:

• They invented processes like distillation that allowed them to produce the drugs that they wanted. This technique was also carried over into the West by the Muslims.
• Superstitious beliefs were not encouraged because the Qur'an states that Allah did not create pain without a cure.
• The Qur'an insists on cleanliness, and so the authorities organised the construction of public baths and most people followed a regimen of cleanliness and good health.
•       The famous doctor Rhazes wrote over 200 medical books like On Smallpox and Measles and El Hawi which described many diseases and openly embraced Western medicinal ideas.
  ·         Another doctor, Avicenna, also wrote many medical books. His Canon of Medicine also included Greek ideas, and so when it was translated into Latin and brought back to the West it returned the Greek ideas there.
  ·         They invented a way to anaesthetise the patient.
  ·         They used surgery as a last resort because they knew how dangerous it could be. Abulcases wrote about good surgical procedures including preparing everything beforehand and knowing exactly what you are going to do before opening the body.
  ·         They brought their skills in external surgery to the Western world.
  
  
  They were hindered in ways, because:
  ·         Their religion did not allow dissection, and people who set up medical practices without a license from a hospital were not stopped
  
  
  In summary...
  Usually religion is considered a hindering factor in the development of medicine, however in this case the opposite was true. The Islamic empire did make many advances of its own, but was very important in taking in the ideas of the West after its collapse and spreading them throughout their empire, which allowed Western Medicine to advance.