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Revision as of 17:19, 29 June 2007
Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas Al-Zahrawi (936 - 1013), (Arabic: أبو القاسم بن خلف بن العباس الزهراوي) also known in the West as Abulcasis, was an Andalusian-Arab physician, and scientist. He is considered the "father of modern surgery"[1] and as Islam's greatest medieval surgeon, whose comprehensive medical texts, combining Islamic medicine and Greco-Roman teachings, shaped both Islamic and European surgical procedures up until the Renaissance. His greatest contribution to history is the Al-Tasrif, a thirty-volume collection of medical practices.
Biography
Abu al-Qasim was born in the city of El Zahra, six miles northwest of Córdoba, Spain. He descended from the Ansar Arab tribe who settled earlier in Spain. Few details remain regarding his life, aside from his published work, due to the destruction of El-Zahra during later Spanish-Moorish conflicts. His name first appears in the writings of Abu Muhammad bin Hazm (993 - 1064), who listed him among the greatest physicians of Moorish Spain. But we have the first detailed biography of El-Zahrawi from al-Humaydi's Jadhwat al-Muqtabis (On Andalusian Savants), completed six decades after El-Zahrawi's death.
In El-Zahra, he lived most of his life. It is also where he studied, taught and practised medicine and surgery until shortly before his death in about 1013, two years after the sacking of El-Zahra.
His work
Abu al-Qasim was a court physician to the Andalusian caliph Al-Hakam II. He devoted his entire life and genius to the advancement of medicine as a whole and surgery in particular. His best work was Al-Tasrif. It is a medical encyclopaedia spanning 30 volumes which included sections on surgery, medicine, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, pharmacology, nutrition etc.
In the 14th century, French surgeon Guy de Chauliac quoted Al-Tasrif over 200 times. Pietro Argallata described Al-Qasim as "without doubt the chief of all surgeons". He is credited to be the first to describe ectopic pregnancy in 963, in those days a fatal affliction. Abu Al-Qasim's influence continued for approximately five centuries, extending into the Renaissance, evidenced by Al-Tasrif's frequent reference by French surgeon Jaques Delechamps.
Al-Tasrif
Abu al-Qasim's thirty-chapter medical treatise, Al-Tasrif covered a broad range of medical topics, including dentistry and childbirth, which contained data that had accumulated during a career that spanned almost 50 years of training, teaching and practice. In it he also wrote of the importance of a positive doctor-patient relationship and wrote affectionately of his students, whom he referred to as "my children". He also emphasised the importance of treating patients irrespective of their social status. He encouraged the close observation of individual cases in order to make the most accurate diagnosis and the best possible treatment.
Al-Tasrif was later translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the 12th century, and illustrated. For perhaps five centuries during the European Middle Ages, it was the primary source for European medical knowledge, and served as a reference for doctors and surgeons.
Not always properly credited, Abu Al-Qasim's Al-Tasrif described both what would later became known as "Kocher's method" for treating a dislocated shoulder and "Walcher position" in obstetrics. Al-Tasrif described how to ligature blood vessels before Ambroise Paré, and was the first recorded book to document several dental devices and explain the hereditary nature of haemophilia.
Advances in surgery
Al-Qasim was a surgeon and specialized in curing disease by cauterization. He also invented several devices used during surgery, for the purpose of:
- inspection of the interior of the urethra
- applying and removing foreign bodies from the throat
- inspection of the ear
See also
- Islamic medicine
- Islamic science
- List of Arab scientists and scholars
- Islamic scholars
- Muslim inventions
- Timeline of invention
- Avicenna
Notes
- ^ A. Martin-Araguz, C. Bustamante-Martinez, Ajo V. Fernandez-Armayor, J. M. Moreno-Martinez (2002). "Neuroscience in al-Andalus and its influence on medieval scholastic medicine", Revista de neurología 34 (9), p. 877-892.