[1.1].

The Origin and First Appearance of the Art of Medicine - A Literary History of Medicine - NCBI Bookshelf An official website of the United States government Here's how you know The .gov means it's official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you're on a federal government site. The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely. Log in Show account info Close Account Logged in as: username Dashboard Publications Account settings Log out Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation Bookshelf Search database Books All Databases Assembly Biocollections BioProject BioSample Books ClinVar Conserved Domains dbVar Gene Genome GEO DataSets GEO Profiles GTR Identical Protein Groups MedGen MeSH NLM Catalog Nucleotide OMIM PMC Protein Protein Clusters Protein Family Models PubChem BioAssay PubChem Compound PubChem Substance PubMed SNP SRA Structure Taxonomy ToolKit ToolKitAll ToolKitBookgh Search term Search Browse Titles Advanced Help Disclaimer NCBI Bookshelf. A service of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. Sánchez I, Joosse NP, Watson Aet al., authors; Savage-Smith E, Swain S, van Gelder GJ, editors. A Literary History of Medicine: The ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ of Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah [Internet]. Leiden (NL): Brill; 2019. doi: 10.1163/9789004410312_040 A Literary History of Medicine: The ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ of Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah [Internet]. Show details Sánchez I, Joosse NP, Watson Aet al., authors; Savage-Smith E, Swain S, van Gelder GJ, editors. Leiden (NL): Brill ; 2019. Contents Search term < Prev Next > CHAPTER 1 The Origin and First Appearance of the Art of Medicine Translation and annotation: Bruce Inksetter , Simon Swain , and Emilie Savage-Smith . [1.1] 1 . The investigation of this subject is difficult, for a number of reasons. In the first place, it is remote in time, and the study of antiquity – especially this particular aspect of it – is no easy matter. In the second place, we find that the Ancients, eminent authorities and persons of sound judgement, have not always agreed with one another in the matter, so that we cannot look to them for clear-cut, definitive conclusions on which we can rely. In the third place, those who have discussed the art of medicine have belonged to various sects and have differed markedly in their accounts, depending on the particular bias of each of them, and this complicates the task of determining which version is the true one. Galen, in his commentary on Hippocrates’ Book of Oaths , 2 stated that the task of determining which of the ancients first discovered the art of medicine was not an easy one. Let us 3 begin by reviewing Galen’s account, together with material we have adduced, in an effort to pin down these various divergent views. 4 There are two basic schools of thought about the art of medicine: one that holds it to have existed from all eternity, and a second that holds it to have been created. The adherents of the latter school argue that, inasmuch as the bodies to which the art of medicine is applied are created, the art itself must also be created. The former school, in contrast, holds that the art of medicine is one of those entities that have always existed, like the creation of mankind. 5 The proponents of the theory of the creation of medicine are divided in their turn into two schools of thought. One of these holds that the art of medicine must have been created at the same time as mankind, in view of the fact that it is beneficial to the human race. The other school, which has the majority of adherents, holds that the art of medicine was invented later. Those who take this position are further subdivided into two factions. One of them considers that it was an inspiration from Almighty God to mankind. This, according to Galen, is the view taken by Hippocrates, all the Analogists, 6 and the Greek poets. The second faction considers that medicine is a human invention. This is the view held by the Empiricists 7 and the Methodists, 8 Thessalus the Misleader 9 and Philinus. 10 However, they disagree on the question of where and how it was invented. Some hold that it was the Egyptians who devised it, adducing as evidence the drug known in Greek as helenion , 11 that is, elecampane. Others believe that Hermes 12 invented all the arts, philosophy, and medicine, while still others hold that it was the people of Kos 13 who invented it from some drugs that a midwife applied to the king’s wife, bringing about her recovery. Others again hold that the art of medicine was originally devised by the people of Mysia 14 and Phrygia, 15 on the grounds that it was they who made music on reed-pipes 16 and used musical airs and rhythms to cure the ailments of the soul, inasmuch as what cures the ailments of the soul also serves to treat the body. Yet another view is that the art of medicine was invented by wise men of the inhabitants of Kos, the island that was the home of Hippocrates and his ancestors – that is to say, the Asclepiads. 17 Many authors of antiquity have asserted that medicine was first practised on three islands lying in the middle of the fourth ‘clime’: 18 Rhodes, Knidos and Kos, the last-named of these being the native place of Hippocrates, as we have seen. 19 Others have held that it was the Chaldaeans 20 who invented the art of medicine, others again that the credit belongs to sorcerers 21 of the Yemen, while still others attribute its discovery to sorcerers of Babylon or Persia, or they hold that it arose among the people of India, or the Slavs, 22 or the inhabitants of Crete, where dodder of thyme 23 comes from, or the people of Mount Sinai. 24 Among those who hold that the art of medicine comes from God, there are some who consider that it was inspired in dreams, alleging as evidence the fact that some people have dreamed of medicines which they subsequently used while awake and found that they cured serious ailments, not only in themselves but in others who used them. There is a school of thought that maintains that God inspired the art of medicine by practical experience, and that it grew and developed further as time went on. By way of evidence, they relate that there was once a woman in Egypt who suffered from great sadness and anxiety, with outbursts of red-faced rage, and in addition was afflicted with weakness of the stomach, bad humours in the chest and retained menstruation. But it happened that she consumed elecampane on numerous occasions, feeling a craving for it, and soon she found that all her ills had vanished and that she had been restored to health. It subsequently appeared that patients with any of those symptoms also found relief by using elecampane. This led people to experiment with other remedies. Those who hold that God created the art of medicine argue that human reason cannot possibly have devised so sublime a science. Galen held this view, as we read in his commentary on Hippocrates’ Book of Oaths . ∵ For my own part, I consider it most plausible and most fitting to hold that it was God, the blessed and exalted, who created the art of medicine and inspired man with it. For such a majestic science cannot have been conceived by the mind of man; it can only have been God, blessed and exalted is He, who was its author, for none but He had the power to create it. I take this view because I do not regard medicine as being inferior to philosophy, and it is generally accepted that philosophy originated from God, the blessed and exalted, who then inspired man with it. [1.2] I have read in a work by the shaykh Muwaffaq al-Dīn Asʿad ibn Ilyās ibn al-Muṭrān, 25 entitled The Garden of Physicians and Meadow of Intellectuals , 26 a passage quoted from Abū Jābir al-Maghribī 27 which reads as follows: 28 The origin of the art of medicine was divine inspiration and revelation. The evidence for this is that that art is beneficial to human beings, either by restoring them to health when they are ill or by preserving their health when they are well, and it is impossible for the art of medicine to produce appropriate care by itself, without being linked to a knowledge of the condition of every individual concerned. It is clear that human beings must have had a beginning, for they exist in verifiable numbers, and anything that exists in verifiable numbers must necessarily have begun as a single entity which subsequently multiplied. Human beings cannot be infinite, for nothing that is infinite can have real existence. Ibn al-Muṭrān comments here, ‘Not everything that cannot be counted is necessarily infinite, for it may have some end that cannot be determined.’ Continuing the quotation from Abū Jābir al-Maghribī: If human beings, who are the sole raison d’être of this art, must necessarily have had a beginning, the art also must necessarily have had a beginning. Clearly, of the many persons who have been in need of that art, the very first was no less in need of it than those who have followed. Equally clearly, the art of medicine cannot have originated as an invention on the part of the person who first discovered knowledge of it, owing to the shortness of his life and the time required for the art. 29 Moreover, it is not possible that in the early period, after human beings had begun to proliferate, they joined forces to devise it collectively, for the art of medicine is a fine and admirably perfected thing, and nothing that is admirably perfected is ever devised by argument, but only by agreement. The people who lived in those days cannot have worked together to make something so wonderful, for individuals are not the same in all respects, including their opinions, and consequently it is not conceivable that their efforts should have been so harmoniously concerted as to achieve such a result. Ibn al-Muṭrān comments: If that were the case, we must suppose that the other arts and sciences must also have arisen from divine inspiration, for they too are admirably perfected. Furthermore, the assertion that a number of individuals could not have joined forces to produce something admirably perfected is not valid. On the contrary, their efforts would have been harmoniously concerted only with an admirably perfected result. Disagreement would not have arisen unless the result had been unsatisfactory. Abū Jābir continues: It has now become apparent that no individuals could have devised the art of medicine in remote antiquity. Nor could they have done so in a later age, owing to their fragmentation and dispersal and the appearance of divergent views amongst them. Anyone who doubts this may be challenged as follows: Do you maintain that it is feasible for a single individual, or even a large number of individuals, to know where herbs and medicinal plants grow, where minerals are to be found and what their properties are, to be conversant with the properties, harmful effects and beneficial effects of all the parts of all animals, to be familiar with all ailments, and to know all lands and the constitutions of their inhabitants, however far-flung their dwelling-places? Or to know the effects of pharmaceutical compounds and the condition that every single one of them can counteract, to which particular temperament each of them is suited and to which it is not suited? And all the other aspects of the art of medicine? If the adversary asserts that that is a simple matter and makes light of it, he is a liar, and if he concedes that it is indeed difficult for any one individual to possess such a mass of knowledge, I shall put it to him that so elaborate an art cannot have been invented. Now, since the art of medicine must necessarily have originated either by invention or by divine inspiration, and since (as we have just seen) there is no way it can have been invented, we must conclude that it arose from divine inspiration. Ibn al-Muṭrān comments: This passage is muddled and entirely incoherent. It is true that Galen says, in his commentary on the Book of Oaths , 30 that this art was divinely inspired, and Plato, in The Republic , 31 describes Asclepius 32 as a man aided and inspired by God. Yet to maintain that the art of medicine could not have been devised by human intelligence is an error, for in that case, what of the intelligence of those who devised arts more lofty than medicine? We may reasonably assume that at the very beginning of human history there was one person who was in need of the art of medicine, just as people are in need of it in our swarming, crowded world of the present day. Perhaps he felt bloated, his eyes were red, and, in general, he was experiencing the symptoms of an excess of blood. He did not know what to do, but something he ate brought on a nosebleed, whereupon he felt better. He took note of this, and when the condition recurred he gave himself a blow on the nose, brought on a flow of blood, and again was relieved. Having definitely established the efficacy of the treatment, he taught it to his offspring and their children. In the course of time, as the art of medicine became further refined, 33 thanks to intellectual effort and growing sensitivity, it came to be standard practice to let blood by opening a vein. As regards that practice of bloodletting, we may reasonably assume that another person, who had the same symptoms, sustained a cut or blow that caused his blood to flow and recovered as a result, as just described. Intelligent people then refined the method and devised the technique of bleeding, which became a regular part of medical practice. Another person ingested a surfeit of food and consequently suffered diarrhoea following nausea, distress, anxiousness, retching, abdominal pain, rumbling of the belly and flatulence. Finally he happened upon one of two methods of purging – either vomiting or suffering a bout of diarrhoea, as his nature dictated – and after this purging he felt better. Some other individual who had absent-mindedly nibbled some spurge 34 subsequently suffered copious vomiting and diarrhoea. Realizing that it was the plant that had produced those effects and would therefore relieve the above-mentioned symptoms, he told the former person about it and suggested that he might use a little of it the next time he was experiencing those symptoms and was having difficulty vomiting or evacuating. The person tried it and found the treatment effective, for his symptoms were eased. Subsequently, as the art of medicine became further refined and developed, 35 interested persons experimented with similar plants to determine which of them would produce such effects and which would not, and which would produce those effects violently and which produce them more gently. Later still, some perspicacious savant examined the effective remedies to see what they tasted like and how they were perceived by the tongue initially and after a time. Taking this as his touchstone, he drew conclusions, putting theory into practice with the assistance of experience, which showed him when he had gone off the track and confirmed his conjectures when they were correct, until he was satisfied with his findings. Now, let us suppose that there was once a man who was suffering from diarrhoea and did not know what medications or foods would be beneficial or harmful to him. By mere chance he ingested some sumac 36 with his food. Finding that it did him good, he took more of it, and was cured. He then wished to know how it had cured him, so he tasted it and found that it was both sour and astringent. This told him that it must be either the acidity or the astringent quality that had had the beneficial effect. He went on to taste another substance that was acidic without being astringent, and used it on a person who was suffering from the same condition, but it proved to be less beneficial. The next step was to try something that tasted astringent but was not sour. He administered that to the same person, and it proved to be more effective than the acidic substance. From this experience, he learned that the astringent taste was the sign of effectiveness. He described the substance as having a binding effect, and declared that a binding medication was useful in relieving diarrhoea. Subsequently, as the art of medicine became further refined and developed, marvellously effective remedies were discovered and useful innovations developed for such cases. One person, finding that a predecessor had devised a remedy which he had tried and found valid, took note of that result, drew conclusions from it, and carried on, and so matters continued until the art of medicine reached a high degree of perfection. Doubtless some would disagree, but most, I think, would not. Where an earlier practitioner went wrong, he was corrected by someone who came after him, and if one generation fell short of the mark, a subsequent generation would be sure to hit it. It is so with all the arts. In my view, this sums up the process as it is most likely to have occurred. Ḥubaysh al-Aʿsam 37 relates that there was once a man who bought some fresh liver from a butcher and took it home. Being obliged to leave for some errand, he placed the liver on some plant leaves that were spread out on the floor. When he returned for the liver after having completed his errand, he found that it had deliquesced and liquified into blood. He took the leaves and identified the plant, and then began to sell it as a lethal drug, 38 until he was found out and sentenced to death. 39 This incident occurred in the time of Galen, who states that that was the reason why the man was apprehended, haled before the judge and sentenced to death. ‘In addition,’ he adds, ‘as the man was being taken out to be executed, I ordered him blindfolded, to ensure that he would not have an opportunity of glancing at that plant or pointing it out to someone else, who would then be able to identify it.’ Galen relates this story in his On Laxative Drugs . 40 [1.3.1] I – Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah – have been informed by Jamāl al-Dīn al-Naqqāsh al-Siʿirdī 41 that many kinds of herbs grow at the foot of the mountain on the other side of which the town of Siʿird 42 stands, near the esplanade. A poor elderly man from the town once came to that place and lay down amid the vegetation to have a nap. As he lay sleeping, a group of people came by and found him there. They noticed that there was blood under him, seeping from his nose and from the direction of his anus, and so they awakened him. All concerned were puzzled, until they realized that the bleeding was due to a plant on which the old man had been lying. Jamāl al-Dīn al-Siʿirdī told me that he had gone to the place himself and seen the plant in question. He described it as similar to chicory, 43 but taller, and bitter to the taste. ‘I have often seen a person put it to his nose and sniff several times,’ he said, ‘and it produces bleeding from the nose immediately.’ Such was his account, but I have been unable to determine whether the plant in the case is the one referred to by Galen or a different one. [1.3.2] Reverting to Ibn al-Muṭrān’s narrative, he says, 44 In my view some gifted soul, some benefactor of humankind, considered what he had observed and reasoned that if the medication had produced that effect, there must necessarily be another type of medication that was beneficial for the organ concerned and counteracted the first one. Accordingly, he investigated by experimenting night and day on animals, administering the first medication and then the second, and if the latter reversed the harm caused by the former, he had attained his objective, while if it did not, he tried a different medication, and so on until he had found the one that he was seeking. It is the discovery of theriac that affords the best evidence for this theory, for theriac was originally nothing but sweet bay seeds 45 and honey. Its subsequent development into a complex useful medication was not due to divine inspiration, but rather to reasoning by analogy and clarity of thought sustained over long periods of time. And if you ask, ‘How could anyone have known that for that medication there must have been an opposing medication?’, I invite you to consider the plant known as ‘The Killer of Bīsh ’: 46 observation had shown that when that plant grew beside Bīsh , it would cause the latter to become desiccated and die, and intelligent men realized that the same might be true of other plants as well, so they looked for such antagonists. An intelligent man, a person of penetrating mind, can discover how to elucidate any matter, a little at a time, from the evidence available to him, if he investigates it in the manner that I have set forth here. Galen wrote a work on the invention of the various arts 47 and in essence says nothing more than I have. [1.4] The reason why I – Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah – have given an account of the assorted views outlined above in all their diversity and variety is that my purpose is to provide an adequate survey of the opinions held by the several factions. As we can see, there is a very large measure of divergence and disagreement, making our search for the origin of the art of medicine difficult in the extreme. However, if an intelligent man applies his wits to the matter, he will undoubtedly conclude that the origins of the art of medicine must have been, for the most part, broadly consistent with the above discussion. At all events, I hold that the art of medicine is essential to human beings and is invariably a feature of their society wherever they are found. However, there may be differences among different societies, depending on where they live, how plentiful their food supply is, and how discriminating they are, so that one nation’s need for medical care may be greater than another’s. There are regions whose inhabitants may frequently fall prey to disorders, especially if they eat a varied diet and are particularly given to consuming fruit, for a regimen of that kind predisposes their bodies to disease to such an extent that some of them may be plagued by illness throughout their lives. Such people are more in need of the art of medicine than others who live in regions with healthier climates, have a less varied diet, and withal eat more sparingly. 48 Furthermore, some people surpass others in terms of their ability to reason logically, and consequently are more discriminating, more skilful at learning from life, endowed with superior judgement, better at retaining the lessons of experience, and so on. This enables them to treat a disease with the appropriate remedy and no other. If it should happen that the inhabitants of a particular region are frequently afflicted with illness but have among them a group of individuals of the kind just described, the latter will be able to apply their power of understanding, their intelligence and their experience to the task of treating disease, and eventually the community will find itself in possession of a substantial store of medical knowledge. At this point, I propose to proceed with a discussion of the origins of the art of medicine to the best of my ability. [1.5] In the first place, humanity may have obtained something of it from the prophets and friends of God, peace be upon them, owing to divine assistance granted to them by Almighty God. Ibn ʿAbbās 49 relates that the Prophet, God bless him and keep him, said, ‘When Solomon, the son of David, prayed, he would see a tree growing in front of him, and would ask it, “What is your name?” If it was a crop tree, it would be planted, and if it was a medicinal tree, 50 the fact would be noted.’ Some Hebrews have said that God, mighty and glorious, revealed a book of remedies 51 to Moses, peace be upon him. The Sabians, 52 for their part, claim that the art of healing came originally from their temples, having been obtained by their wise men 53 and pious forebears, partly through dreams and partly through inspiration from God. Some of them assert that it was found in their temples in writing, the writer being unknown. Others have said that a white hand used to appear with medical knowledge written upon it. They also have a tradition to the effect that Seth 54 revealed the art of medicine after having inherited it from Adam, blessings and peace be upon them both. The Zoroastrians 55 allege that Zarathustra, 56 whom they call their prophet, gave them twelve thousand volumes bound in buffalo hide dealing with four sciences, including one thousand that were devoted to the art of medicine. 57 However, the honour of having been the first to demonstrate the art of medicine has also been claimed for the Nabataeans of Iraq, 58 the Nabataeans of Syria, 59 the Chaldaeans, the Kasdaeans 60 and other ancient Nabataean peoples. ‘Hermes of the Hermeses’, known as Trismegistus, or thrice great in wisdom, 61 is said to have been one of them and to have been conversant with their sciences. He left their land and went to Egypt, where he propagated arts and sciences among the people and built the pyramids and the ancient Egyptian temples. Subsequently, learning diffused from the Egyptians to the Greeks. The emir Abū l-Wafāʾ al-Mubashshir ibn Fātik 62 says in his book, Choice Maxims and Best Sayings , 63 that when Alexander the Great had conquered the kingdom of Darius 64 and made himself master of Persia, he burned the books of the Zoroastrian religion, but sought out works on astrology, medicine and philosophy, translated them into Greek, and sent the translated versions back to his own country, burning the originals. The shaykh Abū Sulaymān al-Manṭiqī 65 relates that ‘Ibn ʿAdī 66 informed me that there was much philosophical learning among the people of India, and that he had heard that the Greeks obtained learning from them. I do not know where he obtained that information.’ Some Israelite scholars have asserted that it was Jubal son of Lamech son of Methuselah 67 who invented the art of medicine. [1.6] In the second place, some portion of the art of medicine may have come to mankind through true dreams. 68 Galen relates in his work On Bloodletting 69 that he learned to open an artery from a dream. ‘Twice,’ he says, ‘I dreamed of being told to open the artery between the index finger and the thumb of my right hand. When I awoke, I did so, letting the blood flow until it stopped naturally, for so I had been instructed in the dream. The quantity of blood lost was less than a raṭl , 70 and as a result, a long-standing pain that I had first felt as a youth, at the point where the liver touches the diaphragm, vanished at once.’ Galen adds, ‘A man of my acquaintance who lives in the city of Pergamon 71 was cured by God of a chronic pain in his side when the artery in the palm of his hand was opened. He had been impelled to undergo that treatment by a dream that he had had.’ In the fourteenth book of his work Method of Healing , Galen says: 72 I once saw a patient whose tongue had become so large and swollen that he could not keep it within his mouth. The patient was a man of about 60 years of age who had never been bled. When I first saw him, it was about the tenth hour of the day. I judged it necessary to purge him with a pill of the usual type, consisting of aloe, 73 scammony 74 and colocynth pulp. 75 It was getting on for evening by the time I administered it to him. I then instructed him to place a cooling substance on the affected part, telling him that I wanted to see what effect it would have so as to be able to determine the appropriate treatment. Another physician who was attending the patient expressed disagreement with my approach, and consequently, although the patient had been willing to take the pill, the question of how the tongue itself should be treated was put off to the following day. We were all hoping that by the time the night was over the treatment that we were trying would have produced a beneficial effect and that the entire body would have purged itself, with the humour that was engorging the tongue having migrated downward. During the night, the patient had a very clear and vivid dream, and the next morning he was full of praise for my advice and was resolved to follow it. He had dreamed, he told us, that someone was instructing him to hold some lettuce juice 76 in his mouth. He proceeded to do so, and was completely cured, and he required no other treatment. In his commentary on Hippocrates’ Bookof Oaths 77 Galen says, ‘People have frequently reported that Almighty God, exalted is He, has inspired them in dreams and visions with medical information that has rescued them from serious illnesses. We find that countless people have been healed by God, some through the agency of Serapis, 78 others through that of Asclepius, in the cities of Epidaurus, 79 Kos and Pergamon, which is my own native city.’ In short, in all the temples of the Greeks and other peoples, we find that individuals have been cured of serious illnesses owing to advice that has come to them in dreams and visions. [1.7] Oribasius, 80 in his Great Handbook , tells of a man who had a large stone in his bladder. ‘I treated him,’ his account runs, ‘with every type of medication that is deemed useful for breaking up bladder stones, but to no avail. He was near death. But then he had a dream in which a man approached him holding in his hand a small dead bird. “This is the bird called ṣafrāghūn , 81 which frequents open land and marshy places,” the man said. “Take it, burn it, and eat the ashes, and you will be cured of your ailment.” When he awoke, he did as his nocturnal visitor had ordered, and the treatment caused the stone in his bladder to break up into tiny fragments like ashes, which were evacuated without difficulty. He was completely cured.’ Another example of a true dream of that kind is to be found in a story about one of the caliphs of the west, 82 wo had been afflicted with a long illness for which he had been treated with many kinds of medication, without success. But then one night he dreamed of the Prophet, God bless him and keep him. The caliph told him of his ailment, and the Prophet, God bless him and keep him, said to him, ‘Anoint yourself with neither and eat of nor , and you will be cured.’ When the caliph awoke, he recalled his dream with astonishment, but could not understand what it meant. He consulted experts in the interpretation of dreams, but none of them could explain it, except ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib al-Qayrawānī, 83 who said, ‘O Commander of the Faithful, the Prophet, God bless him and keep him, has instructed you to anoint yourself with olive oil and to eat olive oil in order to be cured.’ When the caliph asked him, ‘How did you know that?’ he replied, ‘From the words of God mighty and glorious in the Qur’an: « From a blessed tree, an olive neither of the east nor of the west whose oil would well-nigh give light even though no fire had touched it ».’ 84 The following account is taken from a copy of the commentary on Galen’s work, On Sects , 85 by ‘Alī ibn Riḍwān, 86 written in the author’s own hand. ‘I had suffered for years,’ he says, ‘from an excruciating headache resulting from an excess of blood in the blood vessels of my head. I bled myself, but with no result, even after I had repeated the treatment a number of times. Then I dreamed that Galen came to me and told me to read his Method of Healing to him, so I read seven chapters of it aloud. When I reached the end of the seventh chapter, he said, “You have forgotten your headache,” and instructed me to have the back of my head 87 cupped. Then I awoke, and when I had myself cupped at that point, I was cured of my headache forthwith.’ ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Zuhr 88 says in his Facilitation ( of Treatment ), ‘My vision had been strained as a result of a critical bout of vomiting, 89 and subsequently my pupils suddenly became dilated. I was distressed because of this, but then I dreamed of a man who had been a medical practitioner during his life. He told me, in my dream, to put rose syrup 90 into my eyes. At that time I was a student, and while I had learned a good deal about the art of medicine, I had had little practical experience. Accordingly, I consulted my father 91 about the matter. He thought for some time, and finally said, “Do as you were told to do in your dream.” I did so, and the result was so satisfactory that as of the time of writing this book, I have continued to use that treatment as a means of strengthening patients’ eyesight.’ There have been many such examples of medical treatments that have been discovered in true dreams. It has sometimes happened that a person has dreamed of meeting someone who describes the ingredients of a remedy, and the remedy proves efficacious in curing his ailment, with the result that the use of it to treat the ailment in question has subsequently become part of regular medical practice. [1.8] 92 . In the third place, medical knowledge has sometimes been acquired by mere chance or serendipity. This was the case with Andromachus the Younger, 93 who discovered the virtues of viper’s flesh as an ingredient in theriac. There were three events that put the idea into his mind and thus led him, quite accidentally, to that discovery. In his own words: The first experience involved some ploughmen who worked on one of my estates in the place known as Būrnūs. 94 Their task was to prepare the ground for seeding. The estate in question was about two parasangs 95 distant from the place where I lived, and I would go out there every morning to oversee the work, returning home when the men had finished for the day. I made a habit of loading some food and drink for the men on the donkey that my slave-boy rode, in order to keep them in good heart and fit for their work. One day, going out there as usual, I brought them some wine in a big green earthenware jar, unopened, with its top sealed with clay, as well as some food. They ate the food, and then they turned to the jar of wine and opened it. One of them took a mug and dipped it into the wine to take a drink, and there in the jar was a viper the flesh of which had become macerated. The men would not drink the wine after that, ‘but,’ they said, ‘here in this village there is a man who is a leper, 96 whose state is so terrible that he wishes to die. We shall give him some of this wine to drink, and he will die. That will be a meritorious thing to do, for we shall have released him from his suffering.’ Accordingly, they went to his home with food and drink, and gave him some of the wine, quite sure that he would die before the day was out. At nightfall, his whole body became greatly swollen, remaining so until the morning. The outer skin then sloughed off, so that the red inner skin appeared; in due course it hardened, and he was cured. He lived for a long time after that, in excellent health, ultimately dying a natural death from cessation of the innate heat. This showed me that viper’s flesh is useful in treating cases of severe illnesses and long-standing bodily disorders. The second experience involved my brother Apollonius, 97 who was a land surveyor in the king’s service. His work frequently required him to be out in inclement weather conditions, winter and summer alike. One very hot day when he had travelled to a village some seven parasangs away, he stopped to rest at the foot of a tree and fell asleep. As he slept, a viper came along and bit him on one of his hands, which from excessive weariness he had flung out, so that it lay on the ground. He awoke in alarm, realizing at once what had happened to him. He was too weak to stand up and kill the viper, and in anguish and feeling faint, he wrote a message, indicating his full name, the place where he lived and his professional title, and hung it on the tree, in the hope that when someone should come by after his death, the person would notice the message and would take it and read it and inform his family. Having done this, he composed himself for death. As it happened, there was a pool of water nearby, and a little of it had overflowed into a hollow at the foot of the tree upon which he had hung his message. Feeling very thirsty, he drank deeply of the water. Hardly had it reached his stomach when the pain subsided, and the effect of the viper’s bite vanished. He felt quite well again. Astonished at his recovery, he asked himself what there could have been in the water. However, he did not care to explore the pool with his hand, for fear of encountering something that would harm him. Accordingly, he cut a stick from the tree and began to root about with it, and found two vipers which had been fighting and had fallen together into the water, where their flesh had become macerated. My brother went home and remained sound and well for the remainder of his life. After his adventure, he gave up his former occupation and worked exclusively with me. Here we have further evidence that viper’s flesh is beneficial in cases of snakebite and wild animal bites. My third example is as follows: King Yabūlūs 98 had a slave who was malicious, sharp-tongued, opinionated and annoying in every way to everyone but the king, who held him in high regard. As he had harmed many people, the ministers of state, army commanders and leading men conspired to have him killed, but found no way of doing so, owing to the fact that he enjoyed the king’s favour. But then one of them thought of a stratagem: ‘Go,’ he said, ‘and grind up two dirhams’ weight of opium, 99 and give it to him in his food or drink. Sudden death is a frequent enough occurrence. When he is dead, you will carry the body, which will dis play no wounds and no sign of disease, to the king.’ Accordingly, they invited the man to a certain garden, and there, no opportunity of doctoring his food having presented itself, they slipped the opium into his drink, whereupon he died in short order. It then occurred to the conspirators that it would be advisable for them to leave the body in a nearby shed and lock the door securely, instructing some of the head gardener’s workmen to stand by and keep watch, while they went to tell the king that his favourite had suddenly died, reasoning that the king would want to send some trusted attendants to verify the matter. After they had all left the scene, the workmen saw a viper crawl out from the trees and enter the shed where the body lay, but they were unable to follow it and kill it, because the door was locked. Barely an hour later they heard the slave’s voice calling, ‘Why have you locked me in? Help me, a viper has bitten me.’ He pulled at the door from the inside, and the head gardener’s men pushed from the outside, until by their united efforts they broke the door down, and out he came, quite unhurt. This is additional evidence that viper’s flesh can be beneficial in cases of persons who have swallowed lethal potions. Here ends the passage quoted from Andromachus. [1.9] The following account is a further illustration of the same phenomenon – that is, the acquisition of medical knowledge by mere chance. 100 There was once a man in Basra who suffered from such a severe case of dropsy 101 that his family despaired of his life. They had consulted doctors who had recommended many remedies, but to no avail, until finally they became convinced that his case was hopeless. He overheard them saying as much, and said to them, ‘In that case, you may as well let me indulge myself in the pleasures of life while I still can and eat whatever I like, instead of killing me with these diets!’ ‘As you wish,’ they replied. Accordingly, he took to sitting by the door of the house, and whenever a food vendor came by, he would purchase and eat some of his wares. One day a man selling fried locusts 102 passed that way, and the patient bought a large quantity of them. When he had eaten them, he began to pass such copious quantities of yellow fluid that for three days he was near death. Finally, however, the flow stopped, and it was evident that the illness had left him. His strength returned, and he was cured, and he went about attending to his business, perfectly well. One of the physicians who had been consulted in the case happened to see him and, surprised at his recovery, asked him about it, so the former patient told him what had happened. ‘Locusts on their own could not have had that effect,’ said the physician, ‘from whom did you buy them?’ The man told him, and the doctor went to see the locust vendor and asked him where he had caught the locusts. The vendor took him to the place, and there they found locusts feeding amid a dense growth of the shrub known as māzaryūn . 103 This plant is an effective remedy for dropsy: the administration of one dirham’s weight to the patient causes a copious flow of fluid that is virtually uncontrollable. However, the treatment is a risky one, and consequently it is seldom prescribed. Evidently the digestion of māzaryūn within the bodies of the locusts, combined with the subsequent cooking, had attenuated its effect, so that when the patient ate the fried locusts, he recovered. The following account affords a similar example of the fortuitous acquisition of medical knowledge. A man named Philo, 104 who was a descendant of Asclepius, had a swelling on his arm that was hot to the touch and very painful. Feeling as though he were about to die and seeking distraction, he decided to undertake an outing, and ordered his slaves to carry him to a nearby river-bank. In the place where they took him there were dense stands of the plant known as ‘livelong’, 105 amongst which he placed his arm in an effort to cool the swelling. Finding that the pain was eased, he left the arm among the plants for some time. He returned the following morning and did the same again, and before long was completely cured. When people saw how quickly he had recovered, they realized that the cure had been due to the plants. This is said to have been the first of all herbal remedies to be discovered. There are many other examples of the same kind that could be mentioned. [1.10] In the fourth place, medical knowledge has sometimes been acquired from the observation of animals and imitation of them. Al-Rāzī, 106 in his work On Occult Properties , 107 gives as an example the swallow, which, upon finding its nestlings affected with jaundice, goes to look for a so-called ‘jaundice stone’, 108 a type of small white stone that it knows of. The bird brings back one of these stones and places it in its nest, whereupon the young birds recover. According to al-Rāzī, anyone requiring treatment for jaundice need only find some swallow nestlings and daub them with saffron. The parent bird, thinking its young are suffering from jaundice, flies off and returns with a stone. The patient then takes the stone and hangs it around his neck, thereby obtaining relief. Another example is afforded by the female eagle, which sometimes has great difficulty laying her eggs, so much so that her life may be endangered. The male, seeing this, flies off in search of a stone known as the ‘rattle’, because when shaken it produces a rattling sound. He places it in the nest, where it facilitates the emergence of his mate’s eggs. These stones serve the same purpose for human women in cases of difficult childbirth. When one of them is broken, nothing is found inside it, but each fragment, when shaken, produces the same rattling sound as the original stone. They are commonly referred to as ‘eagle stones’, 109 because their beneficial effect was inferred from the behaviour of eagles. A further instance is to be found in the behaviour of snakes, whose sight becomes weak due to their spending the winter in the darkness of underground burrows. When the weather turns warm and they emerge, they cannot see clearly. But they seek out the fennel plant 110 and rub their eyes on it, whereupon their vision clears. When people observed this behaviour, they tried it, and found that fennel juice, if put into the eyes, possessed the property of improving defective eyesight. 111 Galen states in his treatise On Enemas , 112 giving Herodotus 113 as his authority, that it was the bird known as the ibis 114 that introduced humanity to enema treatment. According to him, that bird is an insatiable carnivore, and as a result it becomes constipated, owing to the quantity of bad humours that accumulate within it. When its condition has become sufficiently troublesome, it flies to the sea, and there it scoops up some seawater with its beak and inserts it into its hindpart. The effect of the water is to cause the humours confined within its body to be released. After treating itself in this way, the bird reverts to its regular dietary habits. [1.11] In the fifth place, some elements of medical knowledge may have been acquired through divinely implanted instinct, as we see in the case of many animals. The falcon, 115 for example, is said to hunt a well-known bird, which the Greeks call the dharīfūs , 116 and eat its liver whenever it has a pain in its abdomen. This causes the pain to subside immediately. We also observe that cats 117 eat ‘catnip’ 118 in the springtime, and if they cannot find any, they will nibble the palm fronds of a broom. 119 As everyone knows, that sort of thing is not what they usually eat, but they do it instinctively, for God has made this behaviour a source of good health for them. When they eat green stuff, they vomit up the various humours that have accumulated within their bodies. They go on doing this until they feel that their accustomed natural good health has returned, and then they revert to their usual diet. Cats display similar behaviour whenever they have been bitten by a venomous animal or have eaten part of one: they seek out a lamp or some other source of oil and lap a little of it, thereby attenuating the virulence of the harmful substance. Oleander 120 is said to be injurious to livestock that browse on it in the spring. An animal that has done this loses no time in grazing on a herb which is an antidote 121 to oleander and will counteract its toxicity. The truth of this is to be seen from something that happened quite recently. A secretary named Bahāʾ al-Dīn ibn Nafādah 122 reported that while on his way to Karak 123 he had stopped for the night at a place called al-Ṭalīl, where many oleanders grew. He and another traveller had made camp there, with oleanders all around them. The other traveller’s slaves had tethered their pack-animals nearby, and they began to browse on whatever they could reach, including the oleanders. Bahāʾ al-Dīn’s slaves, however, had neglected to tie up their party’s animals, so they wandered about, whereas the other animals were unable to stray and had to stay where they were. In the morning, Bahā’ al-Dīn’s animals were found to be in good health, while all the others were dead. Dioscorides 124 says in his De materia medica that when one of the wild goats of Crete has been shot with an arrow that remains stuck in its body, it eats a plant known as Mashkaṭarāmshīr , 125 a variety of mint, 126 which causes the arrow to work its way out of the flesh, leaving the animal unhurt. I have heard from the qāḍī Najm al-Dīn ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad al-Kuraydī 127 that the stork, which nests atop domes and in other high places, has a foe in the form of a predatory bird that watches it constantly, awaiting an opportunity of raiding its nest and breaking any eggs that may be there. ‘But,’ he said, ‘there is a certain plant that possesses the property of causing the stork’s predator to become blind when it smells it. The stork therefore carries some of that plant to its nest and places it under its eggs, thereby thwarting the predator’s designs.’ Awḥad al-Zamān 128 says in his work Lessons in Wisdom ( al-Muʿtabar ) 129 that the hedgehog 130 makes its house with a number of entrances. When the wind blows, it opens and blocks up entrances as required to admit beneficial winds while excluding harmful ones. The same author also tells the story of a man who witnessed a combat between a bustard 131 and a viper. 132 He observed that the bustard would retreat, run to a particular plant, nibble some of it, and then return to the fight. While it was thus hotly engaged with its foe, the man plucked the plant in question. In due course the bustard returned to the place where the plant had been growing, but it was not there. The bustard ran about in search of it, but could not find it, and fell dead, for it had been treating itself with that plant. In addition, this author informs us 133 that the weasel is victorious in combat with the snake owing to its habit of eating rue. 134 Moreover, he says, when dogs have worms, they eat spikenard, 135 which makes them vomit and evacuate their bowels. And, he says, an injured stork treats its wounds with mountain thyme. 136 An ox is able to distinguish between plants that are similar in appearance. It can tell which of them make good fodder for it and which do not, and it eats the former while leaving the latter untouched, despite the fact that it is a greedy animal that eats incessantly and is dull-witted and stupid. [1.12] Many illustrative examples of this kind could be mentioned. Now, if animals, which lack the ability to reason, know instinctively what is beneficial and useful to them, how much better equipped to do so are human beings, who are endowed with reason and intelligence and are capable of distinguishing between right and wrong, and as such stand at the apex of the animal kingdom. Here we have the most telling evidence in support of those who believe that the art of medicine was inspired by God, glorified be He, as a gift to His creation. In brief, it may well be that experience and chance together may account for much of the knowledge of the art of medicine that humanity originally acquired. As time went on, that knowledge proliferated, buttressed by analogy and observation as interpreted by keen minds, until from these manifold, diversified sources a wealth of information had accrued to mankind. Scholars, pondering these matters, were able to discern their causes and how they were related to one another, and in that way came to formulate general rules and principles that could serve for purposes of investigation and instruction. Man’s original understanding of the art of medicine had thus evolved to a high degree of perfection. At that level, instruction proceeds by degrees from general principles to particular instances, while investigation proceeds from specific instances to general principles. In addition, I maintain, as stated earlier, that the origins of the art of medicine need not necessarily be ascribed to one specific place and no other. Nor can any one people claim exclusive credit for it. It is a matter of degree. A wide variety of treatments have been devised, and any given people naturally tend to use treatments with which they are familiar. It seems to me that students of the subject have disagreed only in attributing the invention of the art of medicine to one particular people or another on the grounds that other inventions have arisen among that people and been attributed to them. It may be that the art of medicine was discovered among a particular nation or in some specific region of the world and then was obliterated and destroyed by natural or human causes, such as devastating pestilential diseases, droughts 137 that left the land bare and parched, ruinous wars, the manoeuvres of rival kings, or disorder and degeneracy. If it was lost among one nation but arose in another, where it became firmly established over a long period of time, the former nation’s prior discovery of it would eventually be forgotten, and the discovery would be ascribed exclusively to the latter nation, which would be deemed to deserve full credit as its originator. Expressions of the kind ‘since the introduction of such-and-such’ would be used, meaning merely, in reality, since its introduction in that nation in particular. Such a sequence of events is by no means to be ruled out. Tradition transmitted through the generations, including in particular the accounts we possess from Galen and others, informs us that when Hippocrates saw that the art of medicine was about to perish and that knowledge of it was fading among the descendants of Asclepius (of whom Hippocrates himself was one), he took measures to prevent that from happening by disclosing and propagating the art among other peoples, strengthening it, promoting it and making it known by recording it in books. That is why many have taken Hippocrates to be the inventor of the art of medicine and the first to compose works on the subject. This is inaccurate, as we know from generations of tradition. In fact, he was the first of the descendants of Asclepius to write such books with the intent of teaching the art to anyone capable of learning it. Physicians since his time have done the same, for the tradition has been maintained to this day. But it was Asclepius the First who initiated discussion of aspects of medicine, as we shall see in the following pages. Footnotes 1 This chapter is found in all three versions of the book. 2 Tafsīr li-Kitāb al-aymān li-Abuqrāṭ ( In Hippocratis legem commentarius ); Fichtner, Corpus Galenicum , no. 390. Only fragments survive of this commentary, which is not by Galen but certainly Greek in origin and likely to date to the early Roman empire. They are translated and analysed by Franz Rosenthal; see Rosenthal, ‘An Ancient Commentary’. For Hippocrates’ Oath , see Jouanna, Hippocrates , 401–402. Hippocrates forms the major subject of Ch. 4 and Galen is the focus of Ch. 5 . 3 I.e. iau ; cf. Brentjes, ‘Narratives’, 91. 4 The rest of this first section of Ch. 1 is to be found (with some variations and omissions) also in the Taʾrīkh al-aṭibbāʾ by Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn (d. 298/310), but without an attribution to Galen’s commentary on the Oath of Hippocrates and without the direct quotation from the commentary given at the end of this section; see Rosenthal, ‘Isḥāq b. Ḥunayn’, 62–64 and 73–75. The text as given here by iau has been translated and analysed as Rosenthal, ‘An Ancient Commentary’, frag. 1. 5 Rosenthal (‘An Ancient Commentary’, 55 n. 11) suggests that the phrase mithla khalq al-insān (‘like the creation of mankind’) is a repetition of a phrase in the following paragraph and should be deleted; the subsequent phrase, however, is maʿa khalq al-insān (‘along with the creation of mankind’). 6 Aṣḥāb al-qiyās ‘people who use analogy’ is an Arabic designation of ‘Logical Physicians’ or Dogmatists, ancient Greek physicians, usually adherents of Hippocrates, who were known for using reason and analogy in the establishment of causation; see Nutton, Medicine , 124–127. 7 Aṣḥāb al-tajribah (‘people of experience’) is the Arabic term for the Empiricists, the Greek school of physicians who rejected any investigation into the causes of disease and relied only on their own experience of effective treatment; see Nutton, Medicine , 148–150. 8 Aṣḥāb al-ḥiyal (‘people of stratagems)’ were the adherents of the Methodist school of Greek medicine whose approach was more theoretical and arose in opposition to the Empiricists and the Dogmatists; Nutton, Medicine , 188–201. 9 Thessalus of Tralles (1st cent. ad ), here called Thāssalus al-mughāliṭ , was an important figure in the development of the Methodist school of Greek medicine, much derided by Galen; see Nutton, Medicine , 189–193; Edelstein, ‘The Methodists’. For a discussion of the designation al-mughāliṭ , see Rosenthal, ‘An Ancient commentary’, 56 n. 14. It may be an attempt to represent Greek sophistēs , but Thessalus is never called this in Greek (cf. however Galen, De methodo medendi , x:406 (Kühn ed.), ‘Thessalus and his sophists perched on his high throne’). 10 The name in the Arabic, Phīlun, is clearly a corruption of Philinus (of Cos; fl. c. 260 bc ), one of the founders of the Empiricist school (e.g. Rosenthal, ‘An Ancient Commentary’, 56 n. 15) and thus paired here with Thessalus the Methodist. 11 Arabic alānī , Greek ἑλένιον. Tradition had it that the plant was named after Helen of Troy, who (according to Homer in the Odyssey ) was taught about effective drugs while she was in Egypt. The usual Arabic name, rāsan , is of Persian origin. It is a sunflower-like plant having bright yellow flowers in a flat-topped cluster with bitter aromatic leaves and roots (a variety of Inula helenium or related species). It had many uses as a medicinal plant, particularly for stomach disorders and as an antidote for poisonous bites and stings; it was also a popular flavouring agent. See Levey, Medical Formulary , 270 no. 108; Lev & Amar, Materia Medica , 403–405. 12 Hermes was a legendary Egyptian-Greek sage also known as Hermes the Wise or Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice-Great). For Hermes Trismegistus in the Arabic world, see van Bladel 2009; ei Three art. ‘Hermes & Hermetica’ (K. van Bladel). 13 A Greek island, one of the Dodecanese group, lying very close to the Turkish coast, often referred to by its Latin name Cos. The text actually reads Fūlūs , which is surely to be read as Qūlūs which equals Qū, the usual name for the island in Arabic; see Rosenthal, ‘Isḥāq b. Ḥunayn’, 74 n. 1 and Rosenthal, ‘An Ancient Commentary’, 57 n. 18. However, no story similar to that given here regarding Kos and the midwife is known elsewhere. 14 All manuscripts read ahl Mūrsiyā (‘the people of Mūrsiyā’), but Mūrsiyā is unidentified. Mysia, a region in the northwest part of ancient Asia Minor (now Turkey), bounded by Phrygia on the southeast, may be intended. On the other hand, given that the topic is the invention of musical instruments, Mūrsiyā may be the Greek name Marsyas, the legendary Phrygian satyr known in mythology as a master player on the reed-pipe who made the mistake of taking on Apollo; he is not associated with medicine in any secure source; see Rosenthal ‘An Ancient Commentary’, 57 n. 19. 15 An ancient and in part mythical kingdom in the west central part of ancient Asia Minor. 16 The verbal noun zamr means making music on reed-pipes, a zamr being any instrument of the ‘wood-wind’ family of reed-pipes, also called a mizmār ; see ei 2 art. ‘mizmār’ (H.G. Farmer). For a parallel text, see Abū Sulaymān al-Manṭiqī, Ṣiwān al-ḥikmah , 98, which reads hum awwal man istakhraja l-mizmār . 17 The Asclepiads ( Āl Asqalībiyūs ) were ancient Greek physicians claiming descent from or adherence to the Greek god of healing, Asclepius; see Edelstein, Asclepius . 18 Classical Greek geographers divided the known inhabited world into zones or ‘climes’ (Arabic iqlīm , pl. aqālīm ), according to the length of the longest day in the central part of the zone. The middle, or fourth, ‘clime’ extended across the middle of the Mediterranean; see Rapoport & Savage-Smith, Egyptian Guide , 431–435. 19 This sentence regarding the islands in the fourth ‘clime’ is not found in the version of Galen’s text given by Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn, nor are the Chaldeans, the Yemen, Babylon, Crete or Mount Sinai, which are mentioned in the next paragraph. 20 The Chaldeans ( Kaldāniyyūn ; Greek Chaldaioi ) had their origins in Lower Mesopotamia in the mid-9th cent. bc ; in Greco-Roman antiquity the name continued to be associated with this area and with Babylonians but signalled expertise in magic (cf. next note), astrology, divination and science. Arabic authors inherited these references and also confused the Chaldaeans with the Nabataeans; see below Ch. 1.5 , and ei 2 art. ‘Nabaṭ’ (D.F. Graf & T. Fahd). 21 In this context, saḥarah , plural of sāḥir , means sorcerers, for Babel is always associated in Arabic with sorcery, not wisdom. As for the Yemen, Ibn Waḥshiyyah in his treatise on Nabataean agriculture (of uncertain date and questionable authenticity) equates the sorcery of the people of Babel, proverbial in Arabic, with that of Yemen, which he says is proverbial among the Greeks (Ibn Waḥshiyyah, Filāḥah , ed. Fahd, 1161). 22 In a correction of his original study of Galen’s commentary on the Hippocratic oath, Rosenthal suggests that al-Ṣaqālibah must in this context refer to Scythians, i.e. the peoples of the Russian steppe (Rosenthal, ‘An Ancient Commentary’, additional notes p. 2). Greek does not know the term Sklabos till late antiquity but this could have entered the text later. Scythians feature prominently in the famous Hippocratic work Airs Waters Places . 23 Afīthimūn (or afītimūn , Greek ἐπίθυμον) is bindweed or dodder of thyme, a ubiquitous parasitic climbing plant of the genus Cuscuta . The best bindweed must have come from Crete, for Cretan bindweed ( al-afīthimūn al-Iqrīṭī ) was specified by al-Kindī (d. 252/866) for use in two decoctions (Levey, Medical Formulary , 233–234) and the plant was imported from Crete into Egypt for medicinal use (Lev & Amar, Materia Medica , 161–162). 24 Franz Rosenthal suggests that, although the text reads Mount Sinai, the original might have been Tyrsenia, the more literary form of Tyrrhenia (i.e. Etruria), since the Etruscans were another mysterious people imbued with special powers (‘An Ancient Commentary’, 59 n. 24). A marginal note in ms A reads: ‘Note: the expression ṭūr sīnāʾ (Mount Sinai) is borrowed from Syriac. Ṭūr means “mountain”, and sinya , with the letters nūn and yā ’ transposed, means “boxthorn” ( ʿawsaj ). In the Arabized form of the word, the positions of those two letters are reversed, and thus it is that we say ṭūr sīnā ’, that is, “Boxthorn Mountain”.’ The Arabic ʿawsaj is a collective name for spiny bush species such as boxthorn, buckthorn (of species Lycium or Rhammus ) and bramble ( Rubus sp .); see Lev & Amar, Materia Medica , 31. 25 Ibn al-Muṭrān (d. 578/1191) was a prominent Christian physician who served as personal physician to Saladin and was the teacher of iau ’s instructor in medicine, al-Dakhwār (Ch. 15.50). Ibn al-Muṭrān’s biography will be found at Ch. 15.23. 26 Bustān al-aṭibbāʾ wa-rawḍat al-alibbāʾ . 27 This author is unidentified; he is certainly not to be identified with the alchemist Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (Geber), as did B.R. Sanguinetti (Sanguinetti, ‘Extraits’, iii (1854), 248 n. 2; rpr iii, 34). 28 The text that follows is found in Ibn al-Muṭrān, Bustān (facs), 360 line 11 to 365 line 1. 29 This last phrase ( li-qiṣar ʿumrihi wa-ṭūl al-ṣināʿah ) recalls the well-known first aphorism of Hippocrates, usually translated as ‘Life is short, the Art is long’ ( al-ʿumr qaṣīr wa-l-ṣināʿah ṭawīlah ); see Rosenthal, ‘“Life is short, the Art is long”’ and Ch. 4.1.8.2 no. 33 . 30 Here, the title of Galen’s commentary is given as Tafsīr al-ʿahd (commentary on the covenant); for variant titles given to Galen’s commentary, see Rosenthal, ‘An Ancient Commentary’, 53–55. 31 Kitāb al-siyāsah . 32 Asclepius (Asqalībīyūs) is the subject of the next chapter, Ch. 2.1 . Cf. (and contrast) Plato, Republic 408b–c. 33 Laṭufat ḥawāshī l-ṣināʿah , literally, ‘the fringes of the art became finer (or ‘more delicate’).’ 34 Yatūʿ is a collective name for plant species that contain a milky sap (Les & Amar, Materia Medica , 30). This would include the spurge or milk-wort family ( Euphorbia sp.) whose toxic juices were used as purgative substances; Lev & Amar, Materia medica , 487–488; Levey, Medical Formulary , 311. 35 Here the Arabic text reads wa-laṭufat al-ṣināʿah wa-raqqat ḥawāshīha , ‘the art became finer and its fringes more delicate’. 36 Summāq , sumac, is a tall deciduous shrub ( Rhus coriaria L. and related species) whose seeds, fruit and leaves were used in a variety of medical compounds; Levey, Medical Formulary , 285; Lev & Amar, Materia Medica , 490–492. 37 Ḥubaysh al-Aʿsam ibn Ḥasan al-Dimashqī was the nephew of the celebrated translator Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and a gifted translator in his own right. The biographies of both Ḥunayn and Ḥubaysh will be found at Ch. 8.29 and Ch. 8.31 respectively, with additional shorter biographical entries at Chs. 9.2 and 9.4 . 38 That is, a drug for killing people ( dawāʾ li-l-talaf ). 39 At this point the first extensive quotation from Ibn al-Muṭran ends, at a point corresponding to Ibn al-Muṭrān, Bustān (facs.), 365 line 1. 40 Fī l-adwiyah al-mus′hilah ( De purgantium medicamentorum facultate ); Fichtner, Corpus Galenicum , no. 75. Cf. Ch. 5.37 no. 44. For the story in the Greek text, see Galen, Kuhn ed., xi:336–337. 41 Not identified. 42 A town in southeastern Anatolia; see ei 2 art. ‘Siʿird’ (C.E. Bosworth et al.). The name also appears as Siʿirt and Isʿird and in modern Turkish in Siirt. 43 Hindabāʾ or hundabāʾ is endive or chicory ( Cichorium sp), an annual herbaceous plant, erect and branching with hairy stems and leaves. Some writers distinguished two basic varieties, wild and cultivated; Levey, Medical Formulary , 342–343; Lev & Amar, Materia Medica , 164–166. 44 At this point another quotation from Ibn Muṭrān begins (Ibn al-Muṭrān, Bustān (facs.), 365 lines 7–15). 45 Ḥabb al-ghār , seeds of the sweet bay or laurel tree, an aromatic evergreen shrub or tree; see Levey, Medical Formulary , 308–309; Lev & Amar, Materia Medica , 141–142. 46 Qātil al-bīsh . Bīsh is the generally accepted name for the form of aconite originating from India. Aconite is a particularly deadly poison found in a plant root. The poison originating from plants in India – possibly Aconitum ferox – was considered deadlier than that of the Mediterranean variety. The yet milder European varieties are known by the common names of Monkshood and Wolf’s-bane, amongst others. See ei 2 art. ‘Aḳūniṭun’ (P. Johnstone). The phrase qātil al-bīsh (the killer of bish ) has not been found in other texts, nor has the plant that acts as a herbicide been identified. It may be the plant described by Ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1037) in an entry in the Qānūn which is headed by three Persian words: Bīsh, mūsh (mouse), and būḥā (zedoary). The entry reads: ‘ Bīsh mūsh būḥā : As for būḥā , it is a herb ( ḥashishah ) growing alongside bīsh , and any bīsh that is adjacent to it will not bear fruit. It is an important antidote (theriac) for bīsh and it has all the benefits which are associated with bīsh in [the treatment of] leprosy ( al-baraṣ wa-l-judhām ). As for bīsh mūsh ( bīsh -mouse), it is an animal living in the roots of bīsh like a mouse ( al-fārah ) and it is useful for leprosy and is a theriac for all poisons and vipers.’ See Ibn Sīnā, Qānūn (Būlāq), i:280 ( Kitāb 2, Qism 2, Faṣl 2); for the biography of Ibn Sīnā, see Ch. 11.13 Steingass ( Persian-English dictionary , 205) defines būḥā as zedoary, though the more common Persian term is zadwār . Zedoary, also known as white turmeric, is a perennial fragrant herb, Curcuma zedoaria , native to India and East Asia, whose edible dried rhizome is used today as a spice. The leaf shoots are long and fragrant, reaching a metre in height, while the rhizome is large and tuberous with many branches. While Ibn al-Bayṭār (d. 646/1248), whose biography can be found at Ch. 14.58, quotes Ibn Sīnā in an entry titled Bīsh mūsh bīshā , he omits the plant-name būḥā (Ibn al-Bayṭār, Jāmiʿ li-mufradāt (Būlāq), i:133). The explanation given by Ibn Sīnā (and repeated by Ibn al-Bayṭār) of the bīsh-mūsh or bīsh -mouse reflects the legend that the common mouse, as well as other species of small rodents such as shrews, had a supposed resistance to poison and could eat the roots of bīsh when insects were not available for food; see ei 2 art. ‘Faʾr’ (F. Viré). To that legend, Ibn Sīnā adds that, having eaten the poisonous roots, the mice then could act as antidotes to poison as well as assuming the beneficial properties of bīsh in the treatment of skin diseases. 47 De constitutione artium , in three books, of which the book on medicine survives as De constitutione artis medicae ; see Fichtner, Corpus Galenicum , nos. 6, 180. See Ch. 5.1.37 title no. 117 ( K. fī qiwām al-ṣināʿāt ) and note. 48 A marginal note in ms R reads: ‘I [the scribe] say: this is what the author states, and the same happens to the people of Damascus, who love to diversify their dishes and are eager to praise them, and also have many kinds of fruits. They are always vulnerable to diseases and that is why there are so many physicians among them – but if they were few, God would grant them success.’ 49 ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās, commonly called simply Ibn ʿAbbās, was a 1st/7th cent. Qur’anic exegete and soldier, a cousin of the Prophet Muḥammad’s, and son of the eponymous ancestor of the Abbasid caliphs; see ei Three art. ‘ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbbās’ (Cl. Gilliot). The quotation is found in al-Ḥākim, Mustadrak , iv:318, 560 and in al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh (Leiden), I, ii:594. 50 Li-dawāʾ , useful in drug remedies. 51 Sifr al-ashfiyah . It is unclear whether a specific treatise is intended or whether this is a general reference to the Hebrew wisdom literature. No similar statement has been identified. 52 The Sabians ( al-Ṣābʾiah ) were adherents of a gnostic, Hellenized, star-worshipping cult in Ḥarrān (ancient Carrhae, northern Mesopotamia) that survived for several centuries in Islam, and to which several famous scholars belonged, among them Thābit ibn Qurrah, whose biography is to be found at Ch. 10.3 . See ei 2 art. ‘Ṣābiʾ’ (F.C. de Blois) and ‘Ṣābiʾa’ (T. Fahd). 53 ms A has the following note in the right margin: ‘variant reading: “their priests”’. 54 Seth (Shīth) was the third son of Adam and Eve, regarded in Islamic lore as one of the first prophets. See ei 2 art. ‘S̲h̲īt̲h̲’ (Cl. Huart & C.E. Bosworth). 55 The Zoroastrians ( al-Majūs ) were followers of an ancient Iranian religion; see Encycl. Iranica art. ‘Zoroastrianism’; and ei 2 art. ‘Mad̲j̲ūs’ (M. Morony). 56 Zarādusht, or Zoroaster. 57 The Arabic text of this passage is uncertain. The translation here follows the text as emended by Müller. 58 The Nabataeans of Iraq (Nabaṭ al-ʿIrāq), were considered by many early historians to be the native inhabitants of Mesopotamia before the Islamic conquest of Iraq. See ei 2 art. ‘Nabaṭ’ (D.F. Graf & T. Fahd). 59 Sūrāniyyūn, usually referred to as Nabaṭ al-Shām, were Nabataeans who occupied Petra towards the end of the Hellenistic imperial area and the beginning of the Roman one; they were to be distinguished from those in Iraq. See ei 2 art. ‘Nabaṭ’ (D.F. Graf & T. Fahd). 60 Kasdaeans ( Kasdāniyyūn ) is a dialectical differentiation between groups of Chaldaeans. See ei 2 art. ‘Nabaṭ’ (D.F. Graf & T. Fahd). 61 For the legendary Egyptian-Greek sage Hermes, here referred to as Hirmis al-Harāmisah as well as Hermes Trismegistus, see van Bladel 2009; ei Three art. ‘Hermes & Hermetica’ (K. van Bladel). 62 An eminent Egyptian scholar of the eleventh century whose biography is given in Ch. 14.23. 63 Kitāb Mukhtār al-ḥikam wa-maḥāsin al-kalim , a popular book of sayings attributed to the ancient sages which was written in 440/1045 and later translated into Castilian under the title Los Bocados de Oro in the mid-13th cent. This version was the source of translations into several other European languages, ultimately becoming the first English text ( The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers ) to be printed at William Caxton’s press, in 1477. For this particular quotation, see Badawī, al-Mubashshir ibn Fātik , 233. 64 Dārā is the Arabic form of the name of the Achaemenid king commonly known under the Hellenized form Dareios (Darius). See ei 2 art. ‘Dārā, Dārāb’ (B. Carra de Vaux & H. Massé). 65 The biography of Abū Sulaymān Muḥammad ibn Ṭāhir ibn Bahrām al-Sijistānī, known as al-Manṭiqī (the logician), an important Baghdadi philosopher who died in 375/985, will be found in Ch. 11.7. 66 Yaḥyā ibn ʿAdī (d. 363/974), the teacher of Abū Sulaymān al-Manṭiqī in Baghdad, was a Christian Arab philosopher whose biography will be found in Ch. 10.22 . 67 Yūfāl ibn Lāmakh ibn Matūshālakh; see Genesis 4:18–21. 68 For the role of dreams in Greek medicine and thought, see Edelstein, ‘Greek Medicine’, esp. 241–243; Lloyd, Revolutions of Wisdom , 30–37. For the Islamic world, see Lamoreaux, Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation . 69 K. fī l-faṣd ( De curandi ratione per venae sectionem ); Fichtner, Corpus Galenicum , no. 73. For an English translation of the Greek behind this passage (Galen, Kühn ed., xi:314–315), see Brain, Bloodletting , 98–99. Galen gives examples of how, in some instances, benefit can arise from bleeding an artery rather than a vein. 70 See the Glossary of Weights & Measures. 71 A Greek city in the Aeolis region of western Asia Minor, Galen’s native place. 72 K. Ḥīlat al-burʾ ( De methodi medendi libri xiv ); Fichtner, Corpus Galenicum , no. 69. The quotation is found in Galen, Kühn ed., x:971–972. 73 Ṣabr , a species of aloe plant; Lev & Amar, Materia Medica , 94–97; Levey, Medical Formulary , 297. 74 Saqamūniyāʾ , scammony is also sometimes called Syrian bindweed ( Convolvulus scammonia sp), and various types were used as purgatives; Lev & Amar, Materia Medica , 280–282. 75 Shaḥm al-ḥanẓal , pulp of colocynth, or bitter apple ( Citrullus colocynthis L. or related species), a perennial herbaceous plant growing on sandy soil and producing a round, very bitter, fruit the size of an orange. See Lev & Avar, Material Medica , 385–387. 76 ʿUṣārat al-khass , juice made of the leaves of lettuce ( Lactuca sativa and related species); Lev & Amar, Material Medica , 437–438. 77 For this fragment of Galen’s commentary on Hippocrates’ Book of Oaths , see Rosenthal, ‘An Ancient Commentary’, 60. 78 Sārāfus, the Graeco-Egyptian god Serapis, to whom the art of healing was attributed. 79 Epidaurus, in the Peloponnese, was a major centre of the cult of Asclepius, the god of healing. Written as Qndārūs or Qndarūs in the Arabic manuscripts, the name must originally have been Afīdārūs or Afīdarūs but with time became Fīdārūs and then Qindārūs. 80 Oribasius (Urībāsiyūs), d. c. 400 ad , was court physician to Julian the Apostate; cf. Ch. 5.2.1 . He made use of Galen and other physicians to compose an encyclopaedic account of medicine, of which large parts survive in Greek; the encyclopaedia is here referred to as al-Kunnāsh al-kabīr (the Great Handbook); this passage is not found in Oribasius’ extant works. See dsb art. ‘Oribasius’ (F. Kudlien), Brill’s New Pauly art. ‘Oribasius’ (A. Touwaide), Ullmann, Medizin , 83–84; Sezgin, gas iii , 152–154. 81 In this context, ṣafrāghūn means a small bird such as a wren. Dozy ( Supplément , i:836) gives the source of ṣafrāghūn as Dioscorides (2.58 Wellmann, Dioscorides), where the bird is called ὀσσίφραγον ‘bone-breaker’ (Latin ossifragus ), an ossifrage being either of two hawks: the osprey (also called ‘sea hawk’ or ‘fish hawk’ because it obtains fish by plunge-diving feet first from considerable heights) or the lammergeier (also called ‘bearded vulture’), which cracks large animal bones by dropping them from a height onto a rock to obtain the marrow. Dozy, however, also cites Ibn al-Bayṭār’s Jāmīʿ , where a different definition is found: ṣafrāghūn: ism ṭāʾir yusammā bi-l-ifranjiyyah hākadhā wa-huwa l-musammā ṭurughlūdīs (Ibn al-Bayṭār, al-Jāmiʿ li-mufradāt , iii:113). Ṭurughlūdīs is a much smaller bird than the ossifrage; the troglodytidae (‘cave-dwellers’) are insectivores, such as the wren ( Troglodytes troglodytes , the only Old World, Eurasian wren, the rest of the 88 species being confined to the New World). Under ṭurughlūdīs , Ibn al-Bayṭār ( Jāmiʿ li-mufradāt , iii:137) cites al-Rāzī, al-Kāfī : ʿuṣfūr ṣaghīr aṣghar min jamīʿ al-ʿaṣāfīr . The bird appears mostly during winter. It is grey-brown, its beak is thin, etc.: everything points to the wren. 82 Perhaps one of the Fatimids of Egypt (4th/10th–6th/12th cents) or the Umayyads of Cordova (4th/10th–5th/11th cents). 83 Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn AbīṬālib al-Qayrawānī was an early 5th/11th-century religious scholar of Kairouan who composed several books on dream interpretation, four of which are extant. See Lamoreaux, Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation , 51–59. 84 Q Nūr 24:35. 85 Fī firaq al-ṭibb ( De sectis medicorum ); Fichtner, Corpus Galenicum , no. 4. 86 Ibn Riḍwān (d. 453/1061 or 460/1068) was a self-taught Egyptian physician of considerable importance. His biography – and autobiography – will be found in Ch. 14.25. 87 The qamaḥduwah is the occiput or the lower part of the back of the head (Lane, Lexicon , 2562). For cupping in general, see ei Three art. ‘Bloodletting and Cupping’ (C. Álvarez-Millán). 88 The biography of Abū Marwān ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Abī l-ʿAlāʾ ibn Zuhr (d. 557/1161), a celebrated physician in al-Andalus, will be found in Ch. 13.62. In the West he was known as Avenzoar, and his Facilitation of Treatment and Regimen (K. al-Taysīr fī l-mudāwāh wa-ltadbīr ; Liber Teisir sive Rectificatio medicationis et regiminis ) was very influential. 89 Quyāʾ buḥrānī . 90 Sharāb al-ward . Many varieties of the wild dog rose were used for medicinal purposes, and some were cultivated for that purpose; see Lev & Avar, Materia Medica , 261–266; Levey, Formulary , 344–345. 91 His father, Abū l-ʿAlāʾ ibn Zuhr, was also a prominent physician of al-Andalus, and his biography can be found in Ch. 13.61. 92 This section comes either from the anonymous Kitāb al-diryāq (The Book of Theriac) or from a common source. For the Kitāb al-Diryāq , see Kerner, ‘The Kitāb al-diryāq in text and image’ and sources cited there. 93 Andromachus the Younger (Andarūmākhus al-thānī) was active in Rome and probably an imperial physician in the 1st cent. ad . It is his father, Andromachus the Elder, personal physician to the Emperor Nero, who is usually credited with having introduced viper’s flesh into the standard recipe for theriac (see Nutton, Ancient Medicine , 178–179). Andromachus the Younger wrote three monographs on theriac, but the extract quoted here does not survive anywhere in Greek. Galen used Andromachus the Younger as a major source; see Fabricius, Galens Excerpte , 185–189. 94 This place-name is not yet identified. Given that Andromachus the Elder was originally from Crete, the place-name intended may be that of Praesus, an ancient costal town in eastern Crete. Müller (‘Lesarten’, 2) suggests Portus (the port of Rome). 95 Parasang is an ancient Iranian unit of distance. Farsakh is the Arabic form of the Persian farsang , and it usually equalled three Arabic miles ( mīl ) or around 6km. See Mercier ‘Geodesy’; ei 2 art. ‘Farsak̲h̲’ (W. Hinz). 96 Majdhūm ; for leprosy in medieval Islam, see Dols ‘Leprosy’; Dols ‘The Leper’; ei 2 art. ‘D̲ j̲ud̲h̲ām’ (M. Dols). 97 There is no other record for the name of a brother to either Andromachus the Younger or the Elder, and there are a number of variants for the name given in the manuscripts ( Brkwbyws ; Brlwsws ; Brkwfsws ). It is likely that the letter waw was mistaken for a rāʾ , and Apollonius appears the most reasonable interpretation. Müller, in his edition, read the name as Abūlūniyūs, or Apollonius, but then later (‘Lesarten’, 2) provided additional variants and proposed Procopius as the underlying Greek name; Procopius, however is unlikely before the 2nd/3rd cent. ad . 98 In most manuscripts the first letter, as well as sometimes the second letter, is undotted, and the reading of the name is uncertain. Euboulos is a common enough name, but no king of that name is recorded. Müller (‘Lesarten’, 2) suggests it might be Julius, but if so it would be an error for Nero. 99 Afyūn . For the uses of opium, see Lev & Avar, Materia Medica , 231–233, and Tibi, Medicinal Uses of Opium . 100 The following story is also found in al-Tanūkhī, Faraj , iv: 210–212 and in his Nishwār al-muḥāḍarah , iii:161–163. In Ch. 10.62 iau refers to the story again, and cites al-Tanūkhī as the source. 101 Istisqāʾ . The physician Ibn Hindū (d. 432/1032), whose biography can be found in Ch. 11.9, defined dropsy as follows: ‘The term derives from the Arabic word al-saqy (watering). The condition takes three forms: ziqqī (like a water-bag), laḥmī (like meat) and ṭablī (like a drum). The first results from fluid collecting in the belly so that you can hear it rumbling if you move it. The second is caused by a hard swelling on the liver whose harmful effect is felt throughout the body. The third results from the collection of a small amount of fluid and a large quantity of wind in the belly, so that when you hit it a drum-like sound is heard.’ (Ibn Hindū, Miftāḥ (Tibi), 74). 102 Jarād maṭbūkh . 103 Māzariyūn , a variety of Daphne mezereum L, known in English as mezereon as well as dwarf bay, flowering spurge, spurge olive, or spurge laurel; see Levey & al-Khaledy, Medical Formulary of Al-Samarqandi , 226; Ibn al-Tilmīdh, Dispensatory , nos. 27, 39, and 40, where recipes are given including mezereon specifically for the treatment of dropsy. 104 Philo of Tarsus was a 1st cent. druggist noted for a celebrated pain-killer which Galen elucidated in De compos. medicament. sec. locos (Galen, Kühn ed., xiii:269–276); see Brill’s New Pauly , art. ‘Philon, [13] Ph. of Tarsus, Pharmacologist’ (A. Touwaide). The story is also mentioned in the biography of al-Rāzī in Ch. 11.5. In the Arabic text here, this name is given as Aflwlln (with variants). It is not known if he claimed descent from Asclepius, but his recipe was prescribed by the god according to the 2nd cent. sophist Aelius Aristides (Or. 49 [ Third Sacred Tale ] 29). 105 Ḥayy al-ʿālam , a succulent herbaceous purple-flowered plant known in English as orpine or stone crop ( Sedum sp or Sempervivum sp); see Lev & Avar, Materia Medica , 459. 106 Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyā al-Rāzī (d. c. 313/925), known in the West as Rhazes, was a physician and philosopher from Rayy, near modern-day Tehran. His biography will be found in Ch. 11.5. 107 Kitāb al-Khawāṣṣ . 108 Ḥajaral-yaraqān ‘the stone of jaundice’, has not been found in the published lists of Arabic medieval materia medica and has not been identified. However, in the Arabic literature of mirabilia ( ʿajāʾib ) there is mention of the swallow in whose nest a stone useful for jaundice can be found; see ei Three art. ‘Animals, 2.1’ (H. Eisenstein). Al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā , ii, 80 describes it as ‘a small stone, with red and black stripes’. 109 Ḥajaral-ʿuqāb has not been found in any published medieval list of Arabic materiamedica . Al-Qazwīnī ( ʿAjāʾib al-makhlūqāt ed. Wüstenfeld, 220) says it is a stone that rattles and that it helps in childbirth. In early modern Europe, an ‘eagle stone’ was also called an aetites stone, which the Oxford English Dictionary , defines as ‘A hollow nodule or pebble of hydrated iron oxide containing a loose kernel that makes a noise when rattled, formerly regarded as having medicinal and magical properties’. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines it as ‘a concretionary nodule of clay ironstone about the size of a walnut that the ancients believed an eagle takes to her nest to facilitate egg-laying’. See also ei 2 art. ‘Nasr’ (F. Viré). 110 Rāzayānaj or Rāziyānaj , a yellow-flowered, aromatic perennial with dark green feathery leaves and small oval sees (a species of Foeniculum ), for which there were many medicinal uses, including for weak eyesight. See Lev & Avar, Materia Medica , 166–168, and Levey, Medical Formulary , 242. 111 This last sentence is found only in the second and third version of the ʿUyūn . 112 K. fī l-ḥuqan ( De clysteribus et colica ), a pseudo-Galenic work that has not been preserved in Greek; see Fichtner, Corpus Galenicum , no. 194, and below, in Ch. 5 , no. 161 in the list of Galenic books ( M. fī l-huqan wa-l-qawlanj ). 113 Herodotus ( Arūdūṭus ). Herodotus the historian (c. 485–424 bc ), despite his interest in Egypt, does not in fact mention the story of the ibis and the enema. It is likely that Herodotus the physician was intended here. A Greek physician named Herodotus practised in Rome in the 1st/2nd cent. ad and worked particularly in therapeutics, mechanical remedies, and laxatives; see Brill’s New Pauly art. ‘Herodotus [3]’ (A. Touwaide). 114 Although the pseudo-Galenic treatise being quoted here has been lost in Greek, Galen does allude to the behaviour of the ‘Egyptian bird’ at De venae sectione adversus Erasistratum (Galen, Kühn ed., xi:168). A fuller version is told at the start of the pseudo-Galenic Introductio sive medicus in the account of the origin of medicine (Petit, Galen, Le médecin, Introduction ). The well-known pseudo-Galenic Introductio sive medicus may have been iau ’s source, since the very next story in it begins, ‘The historian Herodotus again says …’, although the topic is different. As noted above, Herodotus does not himself given the story of the ibis and the clyster. Pliny the Elder mentions the ibis as a pioneer of bowel cleansing ( Natural History , 8.41.97: ‘with its hooked beak it washes itself through the part where the heavy residues of food are excreted for the healthiest result’). See also al-Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān , vii:32 (about a ṭāʾir , not further identified), and Abū l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī, Muʿtabar , ii:282. 115 The term bāzī covers all species of raptors, and not simply the falcon; see ei Three art. ‘Animals, 2.3’ (H. Eisenstein). 116 B.R. Sanguinetti (‘Extraits’, iii:282) suggests this might be δρύοψ ( dryops ), which has been identified as a kind of woodpecker (Liddell & Scott, Greek-English Lexicon , 451). Compare this story with al-Jāḥiẓ, Ḥayawān , vii:33: the eagle ( ʿuqāb ), when having liver complaints, eats livers of rabbits and foxes to cure itself. 117 Sanānīr is a general term for all cats, both wild and domestic; ei 2 art. ‘Sinnawr’ (F. Viré). 118 Arabic al-ḥashīsh , here probably in the sense of ḥashīshat al-sanānīr (‘the herb for cats’), known in English as ‘catnip’. It is a short-lived aromatic perennial with tiny white flowers that cats find very attractive. It is a member of the Lamiaceae family of plants, possibly a variety such as lemon balm ( Melissa officinalis ) or a species of the genus Nepeta. See ei 2 art. ‘Sinnawr’ (F. Viré); and Lev & Avar, Materia Medica , 348–349. 119 Khūṣ al-makānis , ‘the palm leaves of brooms’. Brooms made of palm leaves were used, for example, to clean the floor of the Kaʿbah; ei 2 art. ‘S̲h̲ayba’ (M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes). 120 Diflā , a variety of Nerium oleander L. and related species. Levey, Medical Formulary , 267–268. 121 Bādzahr or bādazuhr , or ‘bezoar’, is very frequently used, as here, in the general sense of any antidote against poison, and oleander is indeed toxic. More specifically, a bezoar is a stone-like concretion originating from the gastrointestinal system of a certain animals, especially goats, and was highly prized in both medieval and early modern societies as a remedy for poisoning. The term bādzahr is from the Persian pād-zahr meaning ‘against poison.’ See ei 2 art. ‘Bāzahr’ (J. Ruska & M. Plessner). 122 Probably to be identified with an adīb and poet called Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn Nafādah, who died in 601/1204–1205 (al-Ṣafadī, Wāfī , vii: 39–44), but his laqab was Badr al-Dīn, not Bahāʾ al-Dīn. 123 Al-Karak was a fortress situated to the east of the Dead Sea, known today for its crusader castle. See ei 2 art. ‘al-Karak’ (D. Sourdel). 124 Dioscorides (Diyusqūrīdus al-ʿAynzarbī) was a Greek physician (d. c ad 90) whose encyclopaedic work on medicinal substances had an immense and lasting influence on the development of materia medica . See ei 2 art. ‘Dioscorides’ (L. Chipman); Ullmann, Medizin , 257–263; Savage-Smith, ncam -1 , 42–71; Sezgin, gas iii , 58–60. The reference in the Greek text is 3.32 ed. Wellmann. 125 Mashkaṭarāmshīr is Cretan dittany ( Origanum dictamnus L.), a therapeutic and aromatic plant that grows wild only on the mountainsides and gorges of the Greek island of Crete; see Lev & Avar, Materia medica , 554. The etymology of the word mashkaṭarāmshīr is unknown, and Dozy ( Supplément , i:603) provides several different vowellings and splits the word into two parts. 126 Fūtanj or Fudhanj is a collective name of various species of aromatic plants, esp. of the Lamiaceae family, including the various mints. See Lev & Avar, Materia Medica , 30; Levey, Medical Formulary , 312–313. 127 An otherwise unidentified judge in Mosul, mentioned elsewhere by iau as one of his sources (see, for example, Ch. 10.83 ). 128 Abū l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī, known as Awḥad al-Zamān, was a philosopher and physician in Baghdad in the service of the Abbasid caliph al-Mustanjid bi-Allāh (r. 555–566/1160–1170). His biography is to be found in Ch. 10.66 . 129 Abū l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī, Muʿtabar , ii:282. 130 For the hedgehog ( al-qunfudh ) in Arabic literature, see Kruk ‘Hedgehogs’. 131 Stupidity was commonly associated with the bustard ( al-ḥubārā ); see ei 2 art. ‘Ḥayawān. 2’ (Ch. Pellat, et al.) 132 Abū l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī, Muʿtabar , ii:283. 133 Abū l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī, Muʿtabar , ii:283. 134 Rue ( sadhāb; Ruta sp.) is a strongly aromatic evergreen perennial, and both wild and cultivated forms were used medicinally; see Lev & Avar, Materia Medica , 268–270. 135 Sunbul is a variety of spikenard or nard ( Nardostachys sp. or Varleiana sp.), a small perennial with elongated very fragrant roots and aromatic stem; see Lev & Avar, Materia Medica , 289–293; Levey, Medical Formulary , 286–287. 136 The Arabic al-ṣaʿtar is a general term for various species, including thyme, wild marjoram, rue and others. It is often modified with an adjective indicating location, as here with al-ṣ aʿtar al-jabalī (‘mountain ṣaʿtar ’). The particular species intended in a text is difficult to determine with certainty; see Levey, Medical Formulary , 297–298. See also Lev & Avar, Materia Medica , 317–318, where wild marjoram or hyssop is considered the best rendering of the term. 137 For a study of the occurrence and devastating effects of droughts ( al-quḥūṭ ) in the eastern Mediterranean area between 339/950 and 465/1072, see Ellenblum, The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean . Copyright 2020 by the Editors. Published by Koninklijke Brill nv , Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use. This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the cc-by-nc 4.0 License, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. Monographs, or book chapters, which are outputs of Wellcome Trust funding have been made freely available as part of the Wellcome Trust's open access policy Bookshelf ID: NBK621341 DOI: 10.1163/9789004410312_040 Contents < Prev Next > Share Views PubReader Print View Cite this Page Inksetter B, Swain S, Savage-Smith E. The Origin and First Appearance of the Art of Medicine. In: Sánchez I, Joosse NP, Watson Aet al., authors; Savage-Smith E, Swain S, van Gelder GJ, editors. A Literary History of Medicine: The ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ of Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah [Internet]. Leiden (NL): Brill; 2019. CHAPTER 1. doi: 10.1163/9789004410312_040 PDF version of this title (5.8M) Other titles in this collection Wellcome Trust–Funded Monographs and Book Chapters Recent Activity Clear Turn Off Turn On The Origin and First Appearance of the Art of Medicine - A Literary History of M... 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