The Doctors, Pharmacists and Biologists

The Doctors

Galan’s teachings, the School of Alexandria, the Indian medical tradition as transferred North into the Indus region and the Gundishapur School of western Iran and Iraq were influential. Translations from Syriac to Arabic began in the Umayyad period and the works of Galen and other works were translated at the Bayt al-Hikma discussed in earlier posts (from both Syriac and eventually the original Greek).

The head of the Bayt was himself a Christian Arab physician from al-Hira, a site of pre-Islamic learning and civilisation.

Hunayn (besides his role as head of the Bayt al-Hikma) also wrote original medical works. His major contribution to medicine was to eye anatomy, disease and treatments.

Ar-Razi was a physician, administrator, medical teacher, medical author and philosopher who lived in Iran and Baghdad in the 9^th and early 10^th Centuries. He made major lasting contributions in clinical care, nutrition and several other areas of medicine. His students included at least several from China and his medical works were translated into Latin for European students.

Avicenna, a 10^th and 11^th Century physician and philosopher from Bukhara and eastern Iran, earned the title “prince of physicians”. His interests and areas of contribution included anatomy and psychology. A work of his was a valued Western European medical textbook until as late as the 18^th Century.

Ibn an-Nafis of Damascus, who lived in the 13^th Century, described pulmonary blood circulation.

Other scholars such as Nafis’s Christian colleague, Ibn al-‘Ibri, and Ibn al-Jazzar of Tunisia (who worked on the digestive system) made further contributions.

In surgery, Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, who lived in Islamic Spain in the 10^th and 11^th Centuries and was known in the West as Abulkassis, made contributions to the development of surgical procedures and instruments.

The Pharmacists

The area of pharmacy consisted mainly of the recognition and use of healing plants and other substances and followed the translated work of Galen and Dioscurides. Ar-Razi, Avicenna and Ibn Wafid al-Idrisi made early contributions (9^th to 12^th Centuries) and Ibn al-Bitar made a 13^th Century contribution. The latter’s work both consolidated and added to all of the earlier works (from Galen’s on).

The Biologists

Aristotle’s work of zoology was influential. Arab and Muslim scientists (and scientists in the Muslim world) produced works on plants and zoology from the 9^th to the 13^th Centuries.