Arabian Influence
The fame of these great thinkers and writers in philosophy and in
medicine came to be known not only through the distribution of their
books long after their death, but during their lifetime, and in
immediately subsequent generations, ardent seekers after knowledge, who
were themselves afterwards to become famous by their teaching and
writing, found their way into the Arabian dominions in order to take
advantage of the
educational opportunities afforded. These were better
than they could secure at home in Christian countries, because the
process of bringing culture and devotion to literature and science into
the minds of the Northern nations, who had replaced the old Romans in
Europe, was not yet completed. Bagdad and Cordova were the two favorite
places of educational pilgrimage. The names that are most familiar among
the scholars in the Middle Ages in Europe are those of whom it is
recorded that they made long journeys in order to get in touch with what
the Arabs had preserved of the old Greek civilization and culture. Among
them are such men as Michael Scot or Scotus, Matthew Platearius, who was
afterwards a great teacher at Salerno; Daniel Morley, Adelard of Bath,
Egidius, otherwise known as Gilles de Corbeil; Romoaldus, Gerbert of
Auvergne, who later became Pope under the name of Sylvester II; Gerard
of Cremona, and the best known of them all, at least in medicine,
Constantine Africanus, whose wanderings, however, were probably not
limited to Arabian lands, but who seems also to have been in Hindustan.
We are rather prone to think that this great spirit of going far afield
for knowledge's sake is recent, or, at least, quite modern. As a matter
of fact, one finds it everywhere in history. Long before Herodotus did
his wanderings there were many visitors who went to Egypt, and many more
later who went to Crete, and many more a few centuries later who went to
the shores of Asia Minor seeking for the precious pearl of knowledge,
and sometimes finding it without finding the even more precious pearl of
wisdom, whose worth is from the farthest coasts.
To the Arabs we owe the foundation of a series of institutions for the
higher learning, like those which had existed around them in Asia Minor
and in Egypt at the time they made their conquests. Alexandria,
Pergamos, Cos, Cnidos, Tarsus, and many other Eastern cities had had
what we would call at least academies, and many of them deserved the
name of universities. The Arabs continued the tradition in education
that they found, and established educational institutions which
attracted wide attention. As we have said, the two most famous of these
were at Bagdad and at Cordova. Mostanser, the predecessor of the last
Caliph of the family of the Abbassides, built a handsome palace, in
which the academy of Bagdad was housed. It is still in existence, and
gives an excellent idea of the beneficent interest of this monarch and
of other of the Abbasside rulers in education. Its fate at the present
time is typical of the attitude of the Mohammedans towards education.
Though the building is still standing, the institution of learning is no
longer there. As Hyrtl remarks, it is not ideas that are exchanged in it
now, but articles of commerce. It has become the chief office of the
Turkish customs department in Bagdad.
These institutions of the higher learning, founded by the Arabs, at
first as rather strict imitations of the museums or academies of Egypt
and Asia Minor, gradually changed their character under the Arabs. Their
courses became much more formal, examinations became much more
important. Scholarship was sought not so much for its own sake, as
because it led to positions in the civil service, to the favor of
princes, and, in general, to reputation and pecuniary reward. Formal
testimonials proclaiming education, signed by the academic authorities,
were introduced and came to mean much. Lawyers could not practise
without a license, physicians also required a license. These formalities
were adopted by the Western medieval universities to a considerable
degree and have been perpetuated in the modern time. Undoubtedly they
did much to hamper real education among the Arabs by setting in place of
the satisfaction of learning for its own sake and the commendation of
teachers the formal recognition of a certain amount of work done as
recognized by the educational authorities. There was always a tendency
among the Arabs to formulate and formalize, to over-systematize what
they were at; to think that new knowledge could be obtained simply by
speculating over what was already acquired, and developing it. There are
a number of comparisons between this and later periods of education
that might be suggested if comparisons were not odious.
The influence of Arabian medicine on modern medicine can, perhaps, best
be judged from the number of words in our modern nomenclature, which,
though bearing Latin forms, often with suggestion of Greek origins,
still are not derived from the old Latin or Greek authors, but represent
Arabic terms translated into Latin during the Renaissance period. Hyrtl,
without pretence of quoting them all, gives a list of these which is
surprising in its comprehensiveness. For instance, the mediastinum, the
sutura sagittalis, the scrobiculus cordis, the marsupium cordis, the
chambers of the heart, the velum palati, the trochanter, the rima
glottidis, the fontanelles, the alae of the nose, all have their present
names, not from original Latin expressions, but from the translation of
Arabic terms. For all such words the Greeks and Romans have quite other
expressions, in which the sense of our modern terms is not contained.
This has given rise to many misunderstandings, and to many attempts in
the modern times to return to the classic terminology rather than
preserve what in many cases are the barbarisms introduced through the
Arabic, but it is doubtful whether any comprehensive reform in the
matter can be effected, so strongly entrenched in medical usage have
these terms now become.
Freind, in his History of Medicine, already cited, calls attention to
the fact that the Arabs had an unfortunate tendency to change by
addition or subtraction of their own views the authors that they
studied, and wished to translate to others. This seems to have been
true even of some of the most distinguished of them. Of course, the idea
of preserving an author's text untouched, and making it clear just where
note and commentary came in, had not yet come to men's view, but quite
apart from this the Arabs apparently often tried to gain acceptance for
their own ideas by having them masquerade as the supposed ideas of
favorite classic authors.
Another unfortunate tendency among the Arabs was their liking for the
discussion of many trivial questions. Hyrtl, in his volume on Arabian
and Hebrew Words in Anatomy,[6] declares that it is almost incredible
how earnestly some trivial questions in anatomy and physiology were
discussed by the Arabs. He gives some examples. Why does no hair grow on
the nose of men? Why does the stomach not lie behind the mouth? Why does
the windpipe not lie behind the esophagus? Why are the breasts not on
the abdomen? Why are not the calves on the anterior portion of the legs?
Even such men as Rhazes and Avicenna discuss such questions.
It was this tendency of the Arabs that passed over to the Western
Europeans with Arabian commentaries on philosophy and science, and
brought so many similar discussions in the scholastic period. These
trivialities have usually been supposed to originate with the
scholastics themselves, for they are not to be found in the Greek
authors on whom the scholastics were writing commentaries, but they are
typically Oriental in character, and it must be remembered that during
the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, at least, Greek philosophy
found its way largely into Europe in Arab versions, and these
characteristically Arabian additions of the discussion of curious
trivial questions came with them and produced an imitative tendency
among the Europeans.
As a rule the more careful has been the study of Arabian writers in the
modern time, particularly by specialists, the clearer has it become that
they lacked nearly all originality. Especially were they faulty in their
observations; besides, they had a definite tendency to replace
observation by theory, a fatal defect in medicine. The fine development
of surgery that came at the end of the Arabian period of medicine in
Europe could never have come from the Arabs themselves. Gurlt has
brought this out particularly, but it will not be difficult to cite many
other good authorities in support of this opinion.
Hyrtl, in his Thesis on the Rarer Old Anatomists,[7] says that the
Arabs paid very little attention to anatomy, and, of course, because of
the prohibition in the Koran, added nothing to it. Whatever they knew
they took from the Greeks, and especially Galen. Not only did they not
add anything new to this, but they even lost sight of much that was
important in the older authors. The Arabs were much more interested in
physiology; they could study this by giving thought to it without
soiling their hands. They delighted in theory, rather than in
observation.
While we thus discuss the lack of originality and the tendency to
over-refinement among the Arabian medical writers, it must not be
thought that we would make little of what they accomplished. They not
only preserved the old medical writers for us, but they kept alive
practical medicine with the principles of the great Greek thinkers as
its basis. There are a large number of writers of Arabian medicine whose
names have secured deservedly a high place in medical history. If this
were a formal history of Arabian medicine, their careers and works would
require discussion. For our purpose, however, it seems better to confine
attention to a few of the most prominent Arabian writers on medicine,
because they will serve to illustrate how thoroughly practical were the
Arabian physicians and how many medical problems that we are prone to
think of as modern they occupied themselves with, solving them not
infrequently nearly as we do in the modern time.