Avicenna

Undoubtedly the most important of Abulcasis' contemporaries is the
famous physician whose Arabic name, Ibn Sina, was transformed into
Avicenna. He was born toward the end of the tenth century in the Persian
province of Chorasan, at the height of Arabian influence, and is
sometimes spoken of as the chief representative of Arabian medicine, of
as much importance for it as Galen for later Greek medicine. His
principal book is the so-called Canon. It replaced the compendium
Continens of Rhazes, and, in the East, continued until the end of the
fifteenth century to be looked upon as the most complete and best system
of medicine. Avicenna came to be better known in the West than any of
the other Arabian writers, and his name carried great weight with it.
There are very few subjects in medicine that did not receive suggestive,
if not always adequate, treatment at the hands of this great Arabian
medical thinker of the eleventh century. He copied freely from his
predecessors, but completed their work with his own observations and
conclusions. One of his chapters is devoted to leprosy alone. He has
definite information with regard to bubonic plague and the filaria
medinensis. Here and there one finds striking anticipations of what are
supposed to be modern observations. Nothing was too small for his
notice. One portion of the fourth book is on cosmetics, in which he
treats the affections of the hair and of the nails. He has special
chapters with regard to obesity, emaciation, and general constitutional
conditions. His book, the Antidotarium, is the foundation of our
knowledge of the drug-giving of his time.

Some idea of the popularity and influence of Avicenna, five centuries
after his time, can be readily derived from the number of commentaries
on him issued during the Renaissance period by the most distinguished
medical scholars and writers of that time. Hyrtl, in his Das Arabische
und Hebraeische in der Anatomie, quotes some of them,--Bartholomaeus de
Varignana, Gentilis de Fulgineis, Jacobus de Partibus, Didacus Lopez,
Jacobus de Forlivio, Ugo Senesis, Dinus de Garbo, Matthaeus de Gradibus,
Nicolaus Leonicenus, Thaddaeus Florentinus, Galeatus de Sancta Sophia. A
more complete list, with the titles of the books, may be found in
Haller's Bibliotheca Anatomica. For over three centuries after the
foundation of medical schools in Europe (and even after Mondino's book
had been widely distributed), Avicenna was still in the hands of all
those who had an enthusiasm for medical science.

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