The Modern Medical Science: a Journey Through History
The history of Medical Science is very interesting. Centuries before the advent of Islam the Arabs had their own system of medicine in the form of herbs and shrubs (‘Aqaqir wa’l Hashä’ish) which was based on Chaldean medicine and on their own experience. Their first physician was Luqmân and the second Khuzaim. Gradually, Greek medicine attracted their attention. Harith Ibn Kaldah was the first to introduce Greek medicine to the Arabs. After that some books began to be written on the subject. Tiazauq composed a few treatises on pharmacology, and Khalid Ibn Yazid Ibn Mu’awiyah got some Greek and Egyptian books translated into Arabic. This was the condition during the rule of Banu ‘Umayyah. But the science of medicine flourished during the reign of the ‘Abbasis.1
At first the Muslims made arrangements for the translation of Greek, Indian, Persian and Chaldean medical works into Arabic, and thus gained the knowledge of the medical systems of these nations. But they did not accept as such what these systems had offered. They made researches in various branches of the medical science, and accepted what was found to be useful. Besides, they made many valuable new discoveries in the theory and practice of medicine. Then, combining their discoveries and the material sorted out of these systems, they evolved an entirely new system of medicine. When the Europeans learnt this system from the Muslims, generally through the Arabic medical literature, they properly called it Arabian Medicine, acknowledging on the one hand their indebtedness to the Muslims, and on the other putting a seal of testimony to the gigantic and original contributions of the Muslim scientists to medicine. Since the medical knowledge was primarily
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