Westerners are by and large unfamiliar with the world of medieval Islam mainly because most of its literature remains untranslated. A scholarly yet readable study not only acquaints us with this little known world but it also presents material inaccessible to the general reader. Medieval Islamic Medicine, as the title clearly indicates, highlights the importance of medieval Islamic medicine. “Islamic medicine was to be at the core of late medieval and early modern European medical education, however, medieval Islamic medicine was not simply a conduit for Greek ideas, which is the stereotypical picture, but it was a venue for innovation and change,” the authors explain.

The medieval Islamic world encompassed Spain, North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Persia, Central Asia and India; it covered a period of about nine centuries, from the middle of the seventh to the end of the 15th century. By that time, the Islamic world was divided into three empires, the Ottoman, the Safavid and the Mogul. Arabic thus became a powerful tool able to illustrate the most elusive and complex philosophical, medical and scientific terms. For many centuries, the scientific lingua franca from Spain to India was Arabic. Thanks to the phenomenal Greco-Arabic translation movement which began with the second Abbasid Caliph Al-Mansur in the eighth century, Greek medicine as well as other medical traditions were not only assimilated and adapted but also tested and challenged.

By the 12th and early 13th century Arabic medical texts in translation were introduced in Europe. The Canon written by Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna, became immensely popular. It dominated the medical discourse throughout the Renaissance despite the notion (now contested) that this period broke away from the ‘dark’ Middle Ages. Some Italian universities still used the Canon for teaching purposes until the 18th century. In the Middle-Ages, physicians did not have stethoscopes let alone X-rays or magnetic resonance imaging to understand the working of the body or microscopes to study bacteria or human cells. Islamic doctors were, however, keen observers and not only elaborated new details but also wrote about diseases even unknown to the Greeks. This is the case with small pox, measles and hemophilia. They also stressed the duty to learn about the human anatomy for a successful practice.

Great emphasis was also laid on the importance of medical ethics. Medical knowledge was not considered sufficient, a physician was also required to adopt a proper moral conduct and follow the local customs. The ideal physician was competent, well-spoken, properly dressed, kind, righteous, and discreet.

In 1072, a certain Sa’id ibn Al-Hassan in Iraq wrote that a physician “should frequently enter and serve in hospitals; he can study rare diseases which he encounters. One often witnesses in such places diseases which are unheard of and which one does not see in the written medical literature...When he comes to the hospital, he should clothe himself in calm and dignity, and be attentive and listen with benevolence to the complaints of the patients.”

He also asked doctors not to practice a commercial medicine: If his patient is poor, he should treat him for free. The authors add that “These lofty ideals of disregarding money were not universally shared nor always adhered to” and it is still the case today. Hospitals as mentioned by the Iraqi Sa’id ibn Al-Hassan provided a useful venue for medical education but they were also a center of medical treatment, a convalescent home for those recovering from illness or accidents, an asylum, a retirement home taking care of the aged and infirm who had no family.

Hospitals were built throughout the Islamic world. When the travel writer Ibn Jubayr visited Syria in the 12th century he remarked that there was hardly a city without a hospital. Moreover, we learn that according to figures released by the World Health Organization, there were 0.68 beds per 1,000 inhabitants in Pakistan in 1998 and the authors reckon that although “exact or even approximate, figures are not available, it would seem that the number of hospitals beds per capita in medieval Baghdad and modern Pakistan might not have been completely dissimilar.”

Islamic physicians introduced new medicinal substances such as camphor, musk, senna, chloride of ammonia and cotton which went on to play a fundamental role in medical dressings. The distillation technique also paved the way for the preparation of inorganic and organic acids.

These innovative chemical procedures combined with the vast heritage of medieval remedies “formed a much expanded base for drug therapy in the Islamic world, firmly linked to the emerging field of chemistry.”

It is interesting to note that in India, for a long time, the Islamic medical tradition was known by its Arabic name, ‘tibb’; under the Moguls, it was referred as ‘Unani Tibb” or “Unani medicine”. Unani medicine is still practiced in Pakistan and India alongside the traditional Ayurveda, Homeopathy and modern Western medicine. The authors remark that India and Pakistan are the only countries to have incorporated remnants of traditional Islamic medicine in their health care systems, “but because of an increasing skepticism regarding orthodox Western medicine and its sometimes unpredictable side-effects, as well as the increasingly popular image of alternative practices, things might change in the West with regard to the Islamic medical tradition.”

The medieval Islamic medicine, inherited from the Greeks, developed into what is known today as ‘holistic’ medicine. Great concern was placed on environmental factors and diet; medication and interventions were kept to a minimum. This approach clearly echoes current medical trends.

Furthermore, medieval Islamic countries displayed a high standard of public health care thanks to the bath-houses, the drainage systems, fresh water supplies and the large and sophisticated urban hospitals. And for the first time, physicians not only treated the social and political elite but also taught and cared for poor patients in hospitals. And most important, people of differing backgrounds and beliefs were able to cooperate and “participate in a joint scientific discourse. Medieval Islamic Medicine is both a scholarly but entertaining study which displays the biased notions on the dark Middle Ages and introduces the reader to the fundamental role it played. Medieval Islamic Medicine brought innovation and change and paved the way for modern Western medicine.