Ibn-i Sina, 1025 – Author of the Most Famous Medical Textbook Ever Written

The Islamic physicians of the Middle Ages helped preserve and expand the medical traditions of Greece and Rome. The most influential of the great Islamic physician-philosophers was the man known in the West as Avicenna, namely Ibn-i Sina.

His most famous work was the five-book encyclopedia completed in 1025, which provided a foundation for medical teaching for more than 700 years and was used in European medical schools: Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine). Written in Arabic and later translated into Latin, the work was influenced by Hippocrates, Galen, and Aristotle. Like his famous Islamic predecessor al-Razi, Ibn-i Sina emphasized the importance of observation, experimentation, and evidence-based medicine in making clinical decisions.

In the Canon, Ibn Sina discusses cancer surgery and also helps clarify the nature of infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, and the usefulness of quarantine. Remarkably, he was able to distinguish between mediastinitis (inflammation of the tissues in the middle of the chest) and pleurisy (inflammation of the lining of the pleural space surrounding the lungs). During drug testing, he wrote that the medicine should be pure and tested on more than one disease to understand its intended and "accidental" effects, and that the timing of its action should be measured. In addition, to assess medical efficacy, he recommended repeating clinical (human) trials in more than one patient, and advised that testing medicines on animals was not sufficient to determine their effects in humans. Ibn Sina was very interested in psychiatric conditions, ranging from hallucinations and depression to the behavior of stroke victims. Of course, the Canon has its flaws. For example, Ibn Sina wrote that the heart had three ventricles rather than two.

Historian Lawrence Conrad writes that the Canon "addresses the various fields of medicine with a precision and thoroughness that exerted an authoritative influence on the discipline for hundreds of years, and is one of the most impressive and lasting achievements of Islamic science". Canadian physician William Osler described Ibn-i Sina as “the author of the most famous medical textbook ever written” and noted that the Canon endured longer than any other work as a “medical Bible.”

Description of the Article Image: Internal organs according to Ibn Sina's Canon of Medicine, published in Ishfahan, Iran.

Historical Figures Mentioned in the Article: Hippocrates of Cos (460 B.C.–377 B.C.), Aristotle (384 B.C.–322 B.C.), Galen of Pergamon (129–199), Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (865–925), Abu ‘Ali al-Husayn ibn ‘Abd-Allah Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980–1037)

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