Medicine in the medieval Islamic world

A Latin copy of the Canon of Medicine, dated 1484, located at the P.I. Nixon Medical Historical Library of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

In the history of medicine, Islamic medicine, Arabic medicine or Arabian medicine refers to medicine developed in the Islamic Golden Age, and written in Arabic, the lingua franca of Islamic civilization. The emergence of Islamic medicine came about because of two distinctive trends, the indigenous Arab tradition and the foreign influence. Translation of earlier texts was a fundamental building block in the formation of Islamic medicine and the tradition that has been passed down.

Latin translations of Arabic medical works had a significant influence on the development of medicine in the high Middle Ages and early Renaissance, as did Arabic texts chronicling the medical works of earlier cultures.

In the early Islamic and Umayyad period (661-750 AD), the general belief was that Allah provided a treatment for every illness. Most of the treatments consisted of prayers and sacrifices to gods, and the cures were credited to divine intervention. Around the ninth century, Islam began to develop and utilize a system of medicine based on scientific analysis. The importance of the health sciences to society was emphasized, and the early Muslim medical community strived to find ways to care for, with God's permission, the health of the human body. Medieval Islam fostered some of the greatest medical thinkers in history, developed hospitals, expanded the practice of surgery, and the inclusion of women in medicine. Two very important medical thinkers and physicians of Islam were Al-Razi and Ibn Sina. Their knowledge on medicine was recorded in books that were influential in medical schools throughout Muslim history. Throughout the medieval Islamic world, medicine was included under the umbrella of natural philosophy, due to the influence of the Hippocratic Corpus and the ideas of Aristotle and Galen. The Hippocratic Corpus was a collection of medical treatises attributed to the famous Greek physician Hippocrates of Cos (although it was actually composed by different generations of authors). The Corpus included a number of treatises which greatly influenced medieval Islamic medical literature.

Terminology

Some consider the label "Arab-Islamic" as historically inaccurate, arguing it does not appreciate the rich diversity of Eastern scholars who contributed to Islamic science in this era.

Overview

Medicine was a central part of medieval Islamic culture. Responding to circumstances of time and place, Islamic physicians and scholars developed a large and complex medical literature exploring and synthesizing the theory and practice of medicine. Islamic medicine was initially built on tradition, chiefly the theoretical and practical knowledge developed in Arabia and was known at Muhammad's time, ancient Hellenistic medicine such as Unani, ancient Indian medicine such as Ayurveda, and the ancient Iranian Medicine of the Academy of Gundishapur. The works of ancient Greek and Roman physicians Hippocrates, Galen and Dioscorides also had a lasting impact on Islamic medicine. Ophthalmology has been described as the most successful branch of medicine researched at the time, with the works of Ibn Al-Haitham remaining an authority in the field until early modern times.

Medical ethics

The earliest surviving Arabic work on medical ethics is Ishaq ibn 'Ali al-Ruhawi's Adab al-Tabib ("Practical Ethics of the Physician" or "Practical Medical Deontology") and was based on the works of Hippocrates and Galen. Al-Ruhawi regarded physicians as "guardians of souls and bodies", and wrote twenty chapters on various topics related to medical ethics.

Encyclopedias

The first encyclopedia of medicine in Arabic language was Persian scientist Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari's Firdous al-Hikmah ("Paradise of Wisdom"), written in seven parts, c. 860. Al-Tabari, a pioneer in the field of child development, emphasized strong ties between psychology and medicine, and the need for psychotherapy and counseling in the therapeutic treatment of patients. His encyclopedia also discussed the influence of Sushruta and Chanakya on medicine, including psychotherapy.

File:Persian Zakaria Razi.jpg

Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (Rhazes) the Persian scientist wrote the Comprehensive Book of Medicine in the 9th century. The Large Comprehensive was the most sought after of all his compositions, in which Rhazes recorded clinical cases of his own experience and provided very useful recordings of various diseases. Al-Razi was "the first of the (physicians of medieval Islam) to treat medicine in a comprehensive and encyclopedic manner, surpassing probably in voluminousness Galen himself...Rhazes is deservedly remembered as having first described small-pox and measles in an accurate manner".

Major contributers to Muslim Medicine

“The art of healing was dead, Galen revived it; it was scattered and dis-arrayed, Razi re-arranged and re-aligned it; it was incomplete, Avicenna perfected it”.

Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, more commonly know as al-Razi was chief surgeon in many hospitals in the cities of Rey and Baghdad, and he became an advisor to caliphs and rulers of the time. He earned the title of “Galen of Arabs” thanks to his authority and achievements in medicine.Al-Razi was considered the father of Islamic medicine. ‘He was regarded as the greatest physician of the Muslim World,’. but was also considered a philosopher of his time.

He is known for separating the ‘science of physic’. into two different aspects: physical and spiritual. The physical dealt with the ‘physiological diseases’. while the latter dealt with the spiritual self. He felt that there was a relation between the two. Therefore, he also felt that in order to completely understand the science of the body, a doctor needed to be both a master of the physical and spiritual knowledge regarding the body. Al-Razi was also regarding of the fact that there was an interwoven correlation between the physic and the ethics and especially in order to set out his ideas dealing with medical ethics, about which he had written a special book named Ahlaq al-Tabeeb. In Ahlaq Al-Tabeeb (Medical Ethics) Al-Razi shed light on the importance of morality in medicine. He presented the first model for ethics in Islamic medicine. He felt that it was important not only for the physician to be an expert in his field, but to also be a ‘role model.’ His ideas on medical ethics were divided into three topics: a physician must recognize responsibility to patients and to self as well as the patients’ responsibility to physicians.

Along with being a famous physician, al-Razi is known for being an encyclopedic scholar. Throughout his life he compiled more than 200 works and half of them were on medicine:

The kitab-al Hawi fi al-tibb was one of his largest works. (The Comprehensive book of medicine), a collection of medical notes that al-Razi made throughout his life in the form of extracts from everything he had read, as well as observations from his own medical experience. In its published form, it consists of 23 volumes…Each volume deals with specific parts or diseases of the body, although the groupings of ailments are often idiosyncratic. Al-Hawi remained a text book on medicine in most of the Continental Universities as it was regarded up until the seventeenth century as the most comprehensive work ever written by a medical man.

Al-Razi also wrote other books on medicine as well. The second book he wrote, which is also well-known is calledal-Mansuri or (Liber Almansoren). He wrote this book for Mansur ibn Ishaq ibn Ahmad. It consists of ten books based mainly on Greek science. It held the field for a long time in centuries gone by and was prescribed as a text book for medical students. Another work of al-Razi is called the Kitab Tibb al-Muluki or (Regius). The book covers the treatments and cures of diseases and ailments, through dieting. It is thought to be written for the noble class who were known for their gluttonous behavior and who frequently became ill with stomach diseases. He also wrote a book titled A Dissertation on the causes of the Coryza which occurs in the spring when roses give forth their scent. In this tract al-Razi has discussed why it is that one contracts coryza or common cold by smelling roses during the spring season.Al-Razi also wrote Bur’al Sa’a or Instant cure in which he named the medicines which instantly cured certain diseases.

===Abu-Ali al-Husayn ibn Abdalah ibn-Sina=== more commonly know as Ibn Sina, or Avicenna was an Iranian philosopher and physician of the tenth and eleventh centuries. He is known as a universal scientist, in particular, in medicine… Ibn Sina is credited with many varied medical observations and discoveries, such as recognizing the potential of airborne transmission of disease, providing insight into many psychiatric conditions, recommending use of forceps in deliveries complicated by fetal distress, distinguishing central from peripheral facial paralysis and describing guinea worm infection and trigeminal neuralgia. He is also credited for writing two books: his most famous, al-Canon fi al Tibb (The Canon of medicine)and also the Book of Healing.His other works fall into medical subjects such as angelology, heart medicines, and treatment of kidney diseases.

The Avicenna’s medicine- which became the representative of Islamic medicine is mainly manifested in his important and famous work al-Canon fi al Tibb (The Canon of medicine). The book was used as a textbook for instructors and students of medical sciences in the medical school of Avicenna. Besides al-Canon fi al Tibb,The book is divided into 5 volumes: The first volume is a compendium of medical principles, the second is a reference for individual drugs, the third contains organ-specific diseases, the fourth discusses systemic illnesses as well as a section of preventative health measures, and the fifth contains descriptions of compound medicines.

The impact of the Avicenna medicine in the history of medicine has emerged in different dimensions: Treatment publications and education. Teaching al-Canon fi al Tibb gave rise to the emergence of various and different publications. These various publications in turn, made the teaching of al-Canon fi al Tibb in medical centers and among the instructors of medicine much more prosperous.’

Medical Contributions from Medieval Islam

Human Anatomy and Physiology

Medieval Islam made great contributions to the understanding of the human body. An incredible addition to the knowledge of human anatomy and physiology was made by Ibn al-Nafis. The movement of blood through the human body was thought to be known due to the work of the Greek physicians. However, there was question on how the blood flowed from the right ventricle of the heart to the left ventricle, before the blood is pumped to the rest of the body. According to Galen in the 2nd century, blood reached the left ventricle through invisible passages in the septum. Ibn al-Nafis, a 13th century Syrian physician, found the previous statement on blood flow from the right ventricle to the left to be false. According to his own evidence derived from a dissection, Ibn al-Nafis discovered the ventricular septum to be impenetrable by nature, lacking any type of invisible passages, disconfirming Galen’s previous assumptions. Ibn al-Nafis discovered that the blood in the right ventricle of the heart is carried to the left by way of the lungs. This discovery was one of the first descriptions of the pulmonary circulation.

According the Ancient Greeks, vision was thought to a visual spirit emanating from the eyes that allowed an object to be perceived. The 11th century Iraqi scientist Ibn al-Haytham, also known as Al-hazen in Latin, developed a radically new concept of human vision. Ibn al-Haytham took a straight forward approach towards vision by explaining that the eye was an optical instrument. The description on the anatomy of the eye lead him to form the basis for his theory of image formation, which is explained through the refraction of light rays passing between 2 media of different densities. Ibn al-Haytham developed this new theory on vision from experimental investigations. In the 12th century, his Book of Optics was translated into Latin and continued to be studied both in the Islamic world and in Europe until the 17th century.

Ahmad ibn Abi al-Ash’ath, a famous physician from Mosul, Iraq, described the physiology of the stomach in a live lion in his book al-Quadi wa al-muqtadi. He wrote:

“When food enters the stomach, especially when it is plentiful, the stomach dilates and its layers get stretched...onlookers thought the stomach was rather small, so I proceeded to pour jug after jug in its throat…the inner layer of the distended stomach became as smooth as the external peritoneal layer. I then cut open the stomach and let the water out. The stomach shrank and I could see the pylorus…"

Ahmad ibn Abi al-Ash’ath observed the physiology of the stomach in a live lion in 959. This description preceded William Beaumont by almost 900 years, making Ahmad ibn al-Ash’ath the first person to initiate experimental events in gastric physiology.

According to Galen, in his work entitled De ossibus ad tirones, the lower jaw consists of two parts and it can be proven by the fact that it disintegrates in the middle when cooked. Al-Baghdadi, while on a visit to Egypt, encountered many skeletal remains of those “who had died from starvation or had been eaten by their fellows” near Cairo. He examined the skeletons and established that the mandible consists of one piece, not two as Galen had taught. He wrote in his work Al-Ifada w-al-Itibar fi al_Umar al Mushahadah w-al-Hawadith al-Muayanah bi Ard Misr, or “Book of Instruction and Admonition on the Things Seen end Events Recorded in the Land of Egypt”:

“What I saw of this part of the corpses convinced me that the bone of the lower jaw is all one, with no joint nor suture. I have repeated the observation a great number of times, in over two thousand heads…I have been assisted by various different people, who have repeated the same examination, both in my absence and under my eyes…”

Unfortunately, Al-Baghdadi’s discovery was ignored by any medical superiors or literature after his time. This was probably because the information was published in a book about the geography of Egypt. The ignorance of this discovery could also been because the medical establishment was not yet ready to give prominence to observation over the word of ancient authority.

Drugs

Medical contributions made by Medieval Islam not only involved the development and expansion of the human anatomy, but also included the use of plants as a type of remedy or medicine. Medieval Islamic physicians used natural substances as a source of medicinal drugs—including Papaver somniferum Linnaeus, poppy, and Cannabis sativa Linnaeus, hemp. In pre-Islamic Arabia, neither poppy nor hemp was known. Hemp was introduced into the Islamic countries in the ninth century from India through Persia and Greek culture and medical literature. Dioscorides, who according to the Arabs is the greatest botanist of antiquity, recommended hemp’s seeds to “quench geniture” and its juice for earaches. Beginning in 800 and lasting for over two centuries, poppy use was restricted to the therapeutic realm. However, the dosages often exceeded medical need and was used repeatedly despite what was originally recommended. Poppy was prescribed by Yuhanna b. Masawayh to relieve pain from attacks of gallbladder stones, for fevers, indigestion, eye, head and tooth aches, pleurisy, and to induce sleep. Although poppy had medicinal benefits, Ali al-Tabari explained that the extract of poppy leaves was lethal, and that the extracts and opium should be considered poisons.

Hospitals

Many hospitals were developed during the early Islamic era. They were called Bimaristan , which is an Arabic word meaning "house [or place] of the sick" . The idea of a hospital being a place for the care of sick people was taken from the early Caliphs. The bimaristans under the Islamic Empire were of two types; mobile and fixed . The mobile bimaristan is seen as early as the time of the Prophet Muhammad. The Prophet's mosque in the city of Madinah held the first Muslim hospital service in its courtyard . During the Ghazwah Khandaq (the Battle of the Ditch), Muhammad came across wounded soldiers and he ordered a tent be assembled to provide medical care . Over time, Caliphs and rulers expanded these traveling units to include doctors and pharmacists . The field hospitals were well prepared with medications, tents, medical equipment, doctors, and nurses . These mobile bimaristans allowed the disabled, disadvantaged, and those in remote areas to receive care.

Ummayad Caliph Walid ibn Abd al-Malik is often credited with building the first fixed bimaristan in Damascus in 707 AD. The bimaristan had a staff of salaried physicians and a well equipped dispensary . It treated the blind, lepers and other disabled people, and also separated those patients with leprosy from the rest of the ill . Some consider this bimaristan no more than a lepersoria because it only segregated patients with leprosy. The first true Islamic hospital was built during the reign of Caliph Harun-ul-Rashid . The Caliph invited the son of chief physician, Jabrail Bakhtyishu to head the new Baghdad bimaristan. It quickly achieved fame and led to the development of other hospitals in Baghdad.

Features of Hospitals in the Islamic Civilization

As hospitals developed during the Islamic civilization, specific characteristics were attained. Bimaristans were secular. They served all people regardless of their race, religion, citizenship, or gender. The Waqf documents stated nobody was ever to be turned away. The ultimate goal of all physicians and hospital staff was to work together to help the well-being of their patients. There was no time limit a patient could spend as an inpatient. The Waqf documents also stated the hospital was required to keep all patients until they were fully recovered. Men and women were admitted to separate but equally equipped wards. The separate wards were further divided into mental disease, contagious disease, noncontagious disease, surgery, medicine, and eye disease. Patients were attended to by same sex nurses and staff. Each hospital contained a lecture hall, kitchen, pharmacy, library, mosque and occasionally a chapel for Christian patients. Recreational materials and musicians were often employed to comfort and cheer patients up.

The hospital was not just a place to treat patients, it also served as a medical school to educate and train students. Basic science preparation was learned through private tutors, self-study and lectures. Small groups gained clinical training from experienced instructors and ward rounds. Islamic hospitals were the first to keep written records of patients and their medical treatment. Students were responsible in keeping these patient records, which were later edited by doctors and referenced in future treatments.

During this Islamic era, physician licensure became mandatory. In 931 AD, Caliph Al-Maqtadir learned of the death of one of his subjects as a result of a physician's error. He immediately ordered his muhtasib Sinan ibn Thabit to examine and prevent doctors from practicing until they passed an examination. From this time on, licensing exams were required and only qualified physicians were allowed to practice medicine.

Surgery

The development and growth of hospitals in ancient Islamic society expanded the medical practice to what is currently known as surgery. Surgical procedures were known to physicians during the medieval period because of earlier texts that included descriptions of the procedures. Surgery was uncommonly practiced by physicians and other medical affiliates due to a very low success rate, even though earlier records provided favorable outcomes to certain operations. There were many different types of procedures performed in ancient Islam.

Bloodletting and cauterization were techniques widely used in ancient Islamic society by physicians, as a therapy to treat ill patients. Cauterization is a procedure used to burn the skin or flesh of a wound. In the medieval world, a heated metal rod was used as the instrument to burn the wound as well as to stop a wound from bleeding. Bloodletting was used to cure a patient of bad humours considered deleterious to one’s health. A phlebotomist performing bloodletting on a patient drained the blood straight from the veins. "Wet" cupping, a form of bloodletting, was much less invasive and painful for the patient. A slight incision was made in the skin and blood was drawn by applying a heated cupping glass, which caused the blood to rise to the surface of the skin. “Dry cupping”, the placement of a heated cupping glass (without an incision) on a particular area of a patient’s body to relieve pain, itching, and other common ailments, was also used. Though these procedures seem relatively easy for phlebotomists to perform, there were instances where they had to pay compensation for causing injury or death to a patient because of carelessness when making an incision. Both cupping and phlebotomy were considered helpful when a patient was sickly.

Surgery was important in treating patients with eye complications, such as trachoma and cataracts. The vascularization of the tissue that invades the cornea of the eye is a complication seen in trachoma patients. The technique used to correct this complication was done surgically and known today as peritomy. This procedure was done by "employing an instrument for keeping the eye open during surgery,a number of very small hooks for lifting, and a very thin scalpel for excision." A similar technique was used to remove the triangular-shaped part of the bulbar conjunctiva onto the cornea, called the pterygium. This was done by lifting the growth with small hooks and then cut with a small lancet. Both of these surgical techniques were extremely painful for the patient and intricate for the physician or his assistants to perform. In medieval Islamic literature, cataracts were thought to have been caused by a membrane or opaque fluid that rested between the lens and the pupil. The technique for treating cataracts in medieval Islam (known in English as couching) had been known from classical times. A small incision was made in the sclera with a lancet and a probe was then inserted and used to depress the lens, pushing it to one side of the eye. After the procedure was complete, the eye was then washed with salt water and then bandaged with cotton wool soaked in oil of roses and egg whites. After the operation, there was concern that the cataract, once it had been pushed to one side, would reascend, which is why patients were instructed to lie on his or her back for several days following the surgery.

In both modern society and medieval Islamic society, anesthesia and antisepsis are important aspects of surgery. Before the development of anesthesia and antisepsis, surgery was limited to fractures, dislocations, traumatic injuries resulting in amputation, and urinary disorders or other common infections. Ancient Islamic physicians attempted to prevent infection when performing procedures for a sick patient, for example by washing a patient before a procedure; similarly, following a procedure, the area was often cleaned with “wine, wined mixed with oil of roses, oil of roses alone, salt water, or vinegar water”, which have antiseptic properties. Various herbs and resins including frankincense, myrrh, cassia, and members of the laurel family were also used to prevent infections, although it is impossible to know exactly how effective these treatments were in the prevention of sepsis. The pain-killing uses of opium had been known since ancient times; other drugs including “henbane, hemlock, soporific black nightshade, lettuce seeds” were also used by Islamic physicians to treat pain. Some of these drugs (especially opium) were known to cause drowsiness, and some modern scholars have argued that drugs were used to cause a person to lose consciousness before an operation, as a modern day anesthetic would. However, there is no clear reference to such a use before the 16th century.

Women in medicine

During the medieval time period Hippocratic treaties became used widespread by medieval physicians, due the treaties practical form as well as their accessibility for medieval practicing physicians. Hippocratic treaties of Gynecology and Obstetrics were commonly referred to by Muslim clinicians when discussing female diseases. The Hippocratic authors associated women’s general and reproductive health and organs and functions that were believed to have no counterparts in the male body. The Hippocratic’s blamed the Womb for many of the women’s health problems such as Schizophrenia. They described the womb as an independent creature inside the female body; and, when the womb was not fixed in place by pregnancy,the womb which craves moisture, was believed to moved to moist body organs such as the liver, heart, and brain. The movement of the womb was assumed to cause many health conditions most particularly of menstruation was also considered essential for maintaining women’s general health.

It has been written that male guardians such as fathers and husbands did not consent to "their" women being examined by male practitioners unless absolutely necessary in life or death circumstances. The male guardians would just assume treat their women themselves, and or have them be seen my female practitioners for the sake of privacy. The women similarly felt the same way; such is the case as pregnancy and the accompanying processes such as child birth and breastfeeding, which was solely reliant upon advice given by other women. The role of women as practitioners appears in a number of works despite the male dominance within the medical field. Two female physicians from Ibn Zuhr's family served the Almohad ruler Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur in the 12th century. Later in the 15th century, female surgeons were illustrated for the first time in Şerafeddin Sabuncuoğlu's Cerrahiyyetu'l-Haniyye (Imperial Surgery). The treatment provided of women by men was justified to some, whom were believers, through the ideals of the Prophetic medicine (al-tibba alnabawi) other wise known as "medicine of the prophet" (tibb al-nabi) which provided the argument that men can treat women, and women men, even if this means they have must expose their genitals in the necessary circumstances.

Female doctors, Midwives, and wet nurses have all been mentioned in literature of the time period. The high visibility of midwives in the 14th century is demonstrated in Ibn Khaldun's Muquaddimahl where a section devoted to this profession recognized it with the highest in the hierarchy of professions. Being a Wet nurse seemed to have been a common form of employment, although it was rarely mentioned in the Geniza documents. The women whom often pursued such a career were from rural areas, and were frequently poor. These women would hire themselves out to nurse the newborn infant of a middle class woman; this would be done either together with or at the expense of the wet nurses own newly born child. Physical care and refined foods were recommended for the wet nurses in order to guarantee the baby optimal nutrition and mental well being while under the care of the wet nurse. The use of wet nurses was widespread, and provided some legal problems, since the children suckling from the same women were considered to be blood relatives. This resulted in limitations on whom adults could marry when in a confined geological area.

By providing limitations on whom one could marry within a given geological area it wasn't uncommon for relocation to occur. Once relocation occurred the processes of using a wet nurse was often relied upon just as before. This causes a viscous cycle of relocation after a give period of time due to the limitations placed on the marrying, and therefore the matting possibilities. Eventually this was overcome by the dismissal of the idea that suckling from the same woman caused the children to be considered blood relatives, as well as a slight decline in the use of wet nurses.

Conclusion

Western scholarship often belittles the contribution of the physicians of the Islamic world, however medieval Islam’s receptiveness to new ideas and heritages helped it make major advances in medicine during this time, adding to earlier medical ideas and techniques, expanding the development of the health sciences and corresponding institutions, and advancing medical knowledge in areas such as surgery and understanding of the human body.

Through the invention and development of hospitals, ancient Islamic physicians were able to provide more intrinsic operations to cure patients, such as in the area of opthamology. This also allowed for medical practices to be expanded and developed for future reference.

The contributions of the two major Muslim philosophers and physicians, Al-Razi and Ibn Sina, provided a lasting impact on Muslim medicine. Through their compilation of knowledge into medical books they each had a major influence on the education and filtration of medical knowledge in Islamic culture.

Additionally there were some iconic contributions made by women during this time, such as the documentation: of female doctors, physicians, surgeons, wet nurses, and midwives. The oppressive view on women, in addition to the sought privacy for women often controlled the medical treatment available, as well as the actions in which the women could partake in, such as aiding or participating in such medical fields.

See also

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• Al-Tasrif
• Anatomy Charts of the Arabs
• Bimaristan
• Ibn Sina Academy of Medieval Medicine and Sciences
• Inventions in the Islamic world
• Islamic Bioethics
• Islamic Golden Age
• Medieval medicine
• Science in the medieval Islamic world
• De Gradibus
• Medical Encyclopedia of Islam and Iran
• The Canon of Medicine
• Unani

Notes and references

Citations

Bibliography

• Morelon, Régis; Rashed, Roshdi (1996). Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science. Vol. 3. Routledge. ISBN 0415124107Template:Inconsistent citations {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• Browne, Edward G. (2002). Islamic Medicine. Goodword Books. ISBN 81-87570-19-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Dols, Michael W. (1984). Medieval Islamic Medicine: Ibn Ridwan's Treatise "On the Prevention of Bodily Ills in Egypt". Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care. University of California Press. ISBN 0520048369. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Pormann, Peter E.; Savage-Smith, Emilie (2007). Medieval Islamic Medicine. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0748620664. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Porter, Roy (2001). The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521002524. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Saunders, John J. (1978). A History of Medieval Islam. Routledge. ISBN 9780415059145. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Ullmann, Manfred (1978). Islamic Medicine. Islamic Surveys. Vol. 11. Edinburgh: Univ. Press. ISBN 0852243251. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)*

External links

• Islamic Medical Manuscripts at the National Library of Medicine.
• Arabic Medical Manuscripts at the UCL Centre for the History of Medicine.
• Islamic Culture and the Medical Arts at the National Library of Medicine.
• Influence On the Historical Development of Medicine by Prof. Hamed Abdel-reheem Ead.
• Al-Zahrawi (Albucasis) - A light in the Middle Ages in Europe by Dr. Sharif Kaf Al-Ghazal
• Contagion - Perspectives from Pre-Modern Societies