Calvo, Emilia

Suhayl International Journal for the History of the Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilisation

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

280 Reviews 
 
medieval science. But the two books 
in fact offer much more. The list of 
sources and subjects they introduce 
is so vast that an entire generation 
of scholars would be required to 
study them in depth. David King 
describes this task with the aim not 
only of showing how much remains 
to be done, but also, and even more 
importantly, to arouse the reader’s 
curiosity and interest. The bibliogra-
phy, instruments, tables and manus-
cript references and so on are so 
huge that readers may feel lost if 
they have not already read some of 
the papers and have some acquaint-
tance with the related information. 
As the studies presented in the 
two volumes were not initially 
intended to be collected in a book, 
there are several repetitions and the 
internal cross-references are not 
always well accomplished. How-
ever, this slight problem is more 
than offset by the advantage of 
having all these studies together in 
only two volumes. This will greatly 
facilitate the work of the researchers 
in the subject.  
In addition to the text, the two 
volumes contain a vast array of 
pictures, figures, diagrams, formu-
las, editions of Arabic texts and, last 
but not least, an impressive biblio-
graphy (complemented by the 
bibliographies in some of the 
studies), as well as a complete set of 
indexes on topics, proper names and 
titles, selected modern scholars, 
technical terms, parameters, instru-
ments and manuscripts consulted. 
Volume one contains a list of 
comments on the studies previously 
published from both volumes and 
volume two has two chapters 
devoted to this subject, one for each 
volume. Both volumes include a 
page of errata, although -inevitable 
in books of this kind- there are some 
more which have been overlooked. 
Printed on high quality paper, 
both volumes are over a thousand 
pages long and are almost twice the 
size of a normal book. This may 
give an idea of their weight, which 
may make them rather difficult to 
consult. However, their interest is 
beyond doubt for researchers in a 
number of fields, not only the 
history of exact sciences, but also 
the history of cultures and religions 
of any society from medieval to 
modern times. Definitely, they will 
be a required reference point for all 
those working or interested in these 
fields.  
 
Mercè Comes 
 
 
Peter E. Pormann & Emily 
Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic 
Medicine Edinburgh University 
Press, 2007 
 
The book under review presents a 
study of certain aspects of the 
development of medicine in Islam 
although, as the authors state in the 
introduction, their aim is not to 
present a complete history of 
medieval Islamic medicine in a 
single volume but to concentrate on 
specific points and to highlight them 
with particular examples. Never-
theless, the study includes a consi-
Reviews  281 
 
derable amount of unpublished 
material, making it not only a state 
of the art but a research project in 
itself. 
As the authors state in the 
introduction, the medical tradition 
developed in Islam during the 
Middle Ages has influenced the 
fates of countless human beings. It 
is the story of contact and cultural 
exchange across countries and 
creeds, affecting caliphs, kings, 
courtesans and commoners. In 
addition to being fascinating in its 
own right, this tradition formed the 
roots from which modern Western 
medicine emerged.  
The first aim of this book is to 
demonstrate that, contrary to the 
stereotypical picture, medieval 
Islamic medicine was not simply a 
conduit for Greek ideas but a venue 
for innovation and change. The 
medical needs and practices of the 
medieval Islamic world over a vast 
area and time-span were neither 
uniform nor unchanging. Everyday 
medical practices and the general 
health of the Islamic community 
were influenced by many factors: 
religious, climatic, social and 
economic conditions, battles, 
plagues, and other epidemics. The 
resulting medical literature and 
practices involved a rich and diverse 
mixture of religions and cultures 
which were reflected in both the 
physicians and the patients.  
Therefore, instead of trying to 
compress the entire history of 
medieval Islamic medicine into one 
volume, the authors present an 
overview. One of the reasons is that 
there are several topics that have yet 
to receive proper attention and, as a 
result, it is still not possible to 
undertake a comprehensive history 
of medicine in the Muslim World. 
Instead, the authors have chosen to 
examine certain aspects of the social 
history of medicine, such as female 
patients and practitioners, hospitals, 
public health care, rural and urban 
provisions, medical ethics and 
education. Rather than simply 
describing the medical theory and 
offering a chronology of famous 
physicians, the authors are keen to 
explore the problem of how patients 
were actually treated. 
The medical tradition described 
in the book is intimately linked to 
the European tradition. It had its 
origins primarily in parts of the 
Greek-speaking world located in 
modern Turkey and Egypt, and it 
made significant contributions to 
late medieval and Renaissance 
medicine in Europe. And even 
though medical theory and 
anatomical and pathological know-
ledge were to change radically, 
particularly in the nineteenth and 
twentieth centuries, the authors see 
the history of medieval Islamic 
medicine essentially as the history 
of the origins of early modern 
Western medicine. 
The book is conceived as a 
supplement to Manfred Ullmann’s 
Islamic Medicine, a survey comple-
ted in 1976 and whose earlier 
volume was published, like the 
present study, in the Edinburgh 
University Press Islamic Surveys. 
282 Reviews 
 
The contents of the book are 
organized in five topics discussed in 
the first five chapters: the emergen-
ce of medieval Islamic medicine 
and its intense cross-pollination 
with other cultures, notably by way 
of translation, but also by trade and 
travel; the theoretical medical 
framework and extensive literature 
that guided learned doctors in their 
work; the function of physicians 
from various backgrounds within 
society as a whole; medical care as 
seen through preserved case 
histories, studying the application of 
medical practices to specific 
patients and the remedies they 
resorted to; and the role of magical 
therapies, folkloric traditions and 
devout religious invocations in 
scholarly as well as everyday 
medicine. A concluding chapter on 
the afterlife of medieval Islamic 
medicine reflects on its impact upon 
the European medical tradition and 
examines the ways in which 
medieval Islamic medicine is still 
practiced today.  
In the six chapters, the authors 
raise a series of questions (and offer 
good answers to them). How did 
Islamic medical writers attain such a 
high standard of medical knowledge 
and such successful treatments? 
What was the position of the 
physician in medieval Islamic 
society, and how did one become a 
physician? How do the many 
theoretical treatises relate to the 
actual practice of medicine? What 
role did the Islamic hospitals play in 
the provision of medical care and in 
the education of physicians? 
The first chapter, devoted to the 
emergence of Islamic medicine, is 
the story of the emergence of 
Islamic medicine from a diverse 
background of early traditions. The 
text identifies the elements taken 
from Bedouin, Greek, Indian and 
Chinese medicine, the Sassanid 
Empire and the Syriac tradition, and 
reviews the myth of Gondēsh×pýr. 
The translation movement is 
described and some misconceptions 
of this movement are analyzed and 
corrected in the light of recent 
studies, for instance, the role of the 
institution known as “The House of 
Wisdom”. The medical terminology 
created by the translators and, in 
particular, by Hunayn ibn Is¬×q and 
his collaborators is analyzed giving 
examples of the intervention of 
translators not only at the scientific 
but also in the cultural level, such as 
the replacement of the polytheistic 
references in Greek medical texts 
with the reference to All×h.  
The second chapter deals with 
medical theory, starting with the 
description of the medical principle 
of the humoral pathology, inherited 
from the Greeks and which, 
combined with the “six non-
naturals” (factors external to the 
body over which a person may have 
some control), provided an explana-
tory basis for the cause and nature 
of illness. Concepts related to the 
structure and function of the body 
such the pneuma, together with 
some innovations in this field such 
the formulation of the pulmonary 
transit by Ibn al-Naf÷s, who 
corrected the interpretation found in 
Reviews  283 
 
Galen, are analyzed. The study 
makes clear that this discovery is 
not equivalent to the demonstration 
of the continuous circular motion of 
the blood throughout the body 
published by Harvey in 1628. 
Another aspect described in this 
chapter is the importance given by 
Islamic medicine to the patient’s 
state of mind when treating an 
illness. This concern led some 
physicians to write treatises on 
moral philosophy motivated by the 
idea that philosophy could provide 
spiritual health which in turn can 
influence bodily well-being. The 
importance played by diet to 
prevent illness is clear, as is the 
stress on using pharmacology as a 
final resort. Here the authors 
describe the two most prominent 
pharmacological sources of Antiqui-
ty, namely Dioscorides’ On Medici-
nal Substances and Galen’s On the 
Powers of Simple Drugs and 
describe methods of diagnosis, 
classifications found in medical 
treatises of diseases of different 
kinds, and sections in medical 
encyclopedias devoted to anatomy, 
surgery and ophthalmology. 
The following part of this chapter 
is devoted to the description of the 
different types of medical discourse 
in which the treatises were written: 
compendiums or encyclopedias 
were the most popular but, for 
teaching purposes, medical ques-
tions were often discussed in the 
form of questions and answers or in 
verse. 
The prophetic medicine articula-
ted by religious scholars rather than 
physicians aiming to produce a 
guide that would be acceptable to 
pious Muslims is also mentioned by 
the authors as a part of the medical 
theory within Islam, and some of 
the treatises produced are described 
in its context. 
The third chapter entitled 
Physicians and society tries to 
answer the question of how physic-
cians operated within a larger social 
context. It would be unsatisfactory 
to investigate only the care of the 
elite within a metropolitan setting. 
The authors have therefore high-
lighted other aspects, such as 
provisions for the poor, competition 
in the medical market place, and 
women as patients and practitioners. 
Certain trends and tendencies 
emerge regarding the position of the 
physician within the different 
societies. It is likely that this 
preliminary picture reflects the 
situation at other times and in other 
urban or rural settings within the 
confines of medieval Islam. 
The chapter also examines the 
ways in which a student might 
become a doctor. Mainly there were 
three ways: family tradition, in 
which sons followed in their 
fathers’ footsteps, paying a doctor 
for classes, or in a hospital by 
practicing and training there. There 
is a fourth possibility, the majlis 
(session) which also provided an 
opportunity for medical education. 
The text gives examples of all of 
them. 
Other topics dealt with in this 
chapter are medical regulation and 
medical ethics and the status of 
284 Reviews 
 
physicians. There is also a descript-
ion of the main characteristics of 
hospitals in the Islamic world, 
which can be compared with the 
facilities offered by contemporary 
Christian monasteries and hospices.  
In chapter four we find one of the 
most interesting topics of this study, 
namely the actual practice of 
medicine in Islam. It is difficult to 
find reliable evidence of it due to 
the absence or scarcity of the 
sources. Nevertheless, the authors 
have compiled and analyzed some 
case histories and clinical notes 
from sources such as al-R×z÷’s al-
Kit×b al-H×w÷ and al-Kaskar÷’s 
Compendium. These notes describe 
questions such as drug therapy, 
bloodletting, cauterization, surgery 
of different kinds, anesthesia and 
antisepsis, circumcision, diet and 
personal hygiene (for instance, a 
form of dental hygiene regularly 
practiced by all the strata of the 
society is described, consisting of 
cleaning the teeth using a brush 
called siw×k made from the ar×k 
tree. Recent studies have demons-
trated that the wood of this tree 
prevents plaque and inflammation 
of the gums due to the fluoride and 
tannins in its wood).  
Chapter five is devoted to 
popular medicine. It describes 
magical, folkloric and astrological 
practices which formed part of the 
medical pluralism of the time and 
reflected ancient beliefs and 
customs that long predated Islam. 
The reliance at times on astrology 
and magic can be seen at all levels 
of the society. To varying degrees, 
magical and astrological techniques 
were an integral part of all medical 
practice, whether learned or 
traditional. Amulets and talismans 
were widely used, and learned 
physicians and scholars discussed 
their efficacy in their treatises. This 
chapter describes the contents of 
some extant manuals of magical 
methods. Treatises on Prophetic 
Medicine also come under the 
heading of popular medicine, 
containing folkloric and magical 
remedies and invocations to protect 
from jinn and the Evil Eye. This 
chapter includes information on 
magic-medicinal bowls and on the 
use of astrology by physicians, who 
followed Hippocrates’ dictum “the 
science of the stars is no small part 
of the science of medicine”.  
The last chapter of this study is 
entitled Afterlife. The authors offer a 
panoramic view of how the 
medieval Islamic medical tradition 
spread to other regions of the world, 
beginning with Europe to the north-
west, and then south and east, to 
look at the continuation of this 
tradition within other Islamic 
countries. Throughout the process 
of transmission, translations were 
required, and many subtle changes 
ensued. Islamic medicine also faced 
challenges from competing medical 
systems, most notably modem 
Western medicine: indeed, the 
Islamic tradition was eventually 
pushed to the margins of medical 
care. 
The chapter gives information on 
Medieval Latin and Byzantine 
Greek translations of Arabic 
Reviews  285 
 
medical texts, on the role of the 
Jews as transmitters, and of the 
Crusades as an occasion for 
exchanging medical ideas and 
translations like the one carried out 
by Stephen of Antioch from al-
Majýs÷’s Complete Book of the 
Medical Art. This influence conti-
nued during the Renaissance, a 
period in which the medical works 
of al-R×z÷ and Ibn S÷n× continued to 
be highly influential sources. As for 
the East, the text gives information 
on the influence of Islamic medicine 
in the Ottoman Empire, in Safavid 
Persia and in the Indian subconti-
nent. This influence is evident 
throughout the Islamic countries 
even today. 
At the end of each chapter, 
before the notes section, the authors 
provide a paragraph with suggest-
ions for further reading on the topics 
covered. 
In their conclusion, the authors 
discuss the extent to which Islamic 
physicians can be considered to be 
innovative. The answer is that, 
while maintaining great respect for 
the authority of ancient texts, they 
often tested and challenged their 
precursors. Al-R×z÷ is, possibly, the 
outstanding example of this. Physi-
cians also compiled compendia, 
which skillfully organized the 
medical precepts and principia: the 
Canon of Medicine by Ibn S÷n× is a 
good example. Some later physi-
cians (both European and Islamic) 
were so impressed by the 
methodically construed system that 
they may have thought that it 
required no further elaboration or 
development. Innovation was also 
evident in what we would today call 
“public health care”, comprising 
public bath-houses, drainage sys-
tems and hospitals that contributed 
to the general health of the populat-
ion. 
Two other questions are 
addressed and answered in the 
conclusion of the book: why did this 
tradition emerge when and where it 
did, and why do certain aspects still 
prove attractive to peoples in many 
parts of the world? The answer to 
the first question is that Islamic 
society tolerated other customs and 
confessions and permitted peoples 
of divergent backgrounds and 
beliefs to cooperate and to 
participate in a joint scientific 
discourse. 
As for the second question, the 
basic medical system was what we 
would today term ‘holistic’. The 
concern was for the improvement of 
the patient through manipulation of 
environmental factors and diet. 
When those proved insufficient, 
medicaments were applied. Inter-
vention was kept to a minimum. 
This approach resonates with many 
current trends in medical care. 
The book ends with a good 
bibliography that contains studies 
by modern scholars as well as 
translations into modern European 
languages of the sources discussed 
in the study. There is also a 
comparative chronology between 
the “East” and “West” from 450 
BC, the time of Hippocrates, until 
1814 when al-Sal×w÷ was active in 
the North of Africa. An index of 
286 Reviews 
 
names and works gives references 
to the historical personalities and 
the titles of their writings. This 
index includes references to 
translations as well as editions when 
they are published. There is also a 
general index which includes 
mainly medical concepts and names 
of places. The book has 22 
illustrations, most of them corres-
ponding to pages of Arabic 
manuscripts containing medical 
treatises. 
In summary, this is a very useful 
overview of some important aspects 
of the development of medicine in 
Medieval Islam. 
 
Emilia Calvo 
 
 
 


Peter E. Pormann & Emily Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine Edinburgh University Press, 2007

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