Avicenna Canon of Medicine Volume 5: Pharmacopia and Index of the Complete Five Volumes - Hardcover

Avicenna; Laleh Bakhtiar

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1567448585 ISBN 13: 9781567448580

Publisher: Kazi Publications, Inc., 2015

Synopsis

Avicenna divided Volume 5 into two parts. Part 1 contains the formulas for compound medications arranged according to the various types of preparations that he found in the previous medical books translated into Arabic from Greek and Syriac. In Part 2 he includes the compound medications arranged according to treating diseases from head to toe that were based on his own experience and usage with patients. Volume 5 contains more than 800 pharmacologically tested complex formulas with thorough descriptions of their application and effectiveness. This volume not only contains an index of its contents organized by healing properties, but also a comprehensive 400 page index of all five volumes based on the names of the natural healers and what they heal.

About this title

About the Author

The Prince of Physicians, Abu Ali ibn Sina (Avicenna) (b. 370/980) was born in Bukhara. By the age of ten he had learned the entire Quran as well as grammar and then began the study of logic and mathematics. Once these subjects were mastered, he studied physics, metaphysics and medicine. By the age of sixteen he had mastered all of the sciences of his day except metaphysics. While he had read Aristotle s Metaphysics over and over again and had even memorized it, he could not understand it until he read al-Farabi's commentary on it. Avicenna was then eighteen years old. He was favored by the ruler of Bukhara because of his mastery of medicine, but when he was thirty-two, he was forced to migrate because of the political situation in his home town area. He migrated to Jurjan on the southeast coast of the Caspian Sea in an attempt to join the court of the well-known Qabus ibn Wushmgir. This never materialized as the ruler had died in 1013 during Avicenna s travels to Jurjan. Avicenna then retired to a village near Jurjan where he was to meet his disciple-to-be, al-Juzjani. Al-Juzjani was devoted to Avicenna and was to write commentaries upon his works as well as to preserve copies of all of the master s writings. It was in Jurjan in 1012 that Avicenna wrote the beginning of his great medical text, The Canon (al-Qanun) on medicine. Avicenna remained in Jurjan for two or three years before moving to Rey in 405/1014 or 406/1015, a city near present day Tehran and from there to Hamadan in the northwest Iran. He became a minister in the Buyuid Court of Shams al-Dawlah as well as the court physician. Once again Avicenna was obliged to migrate because of the unstable political conditions in Hamadan so he moved to Isfahan where he enjoyed a fifteen year period of peace, writing many of his major works at that time. Eventually, however, he was forced to migrate once again and moved back to Hamadan where he died in 428/1037.

Review

We can draw three main conclusions from a short overview of Avicenna s medical writings. First, these works, and especially the Canon, offer rich pickings . . . . The role of experience in gaining medical knowledge is one such question; another is the function of the soul and how it interfaces with the brain. Second, it is clearly wrong to characterize Avicenna s Canon merely as a well-arranged collection of previous medical knowledge with some Aristotelian philosophy thrown in for good measure. In the Canon, Avicenna s contribution is not limited to organizing information. We have seen that he is innovative in three ways: he further developed Galen s concept of qualified experience; he draws at least occasionally on his own experience as a clinician; and he incorporates his own innovative philosophical ideas about the inner sense into his medical discourse. Third, one can only marvel at the relative neglect with which medical historians and philosophers alike have treated Avicenna s medical writings. We now have a somewhat critical Arabic edition and English translation of the Canon, although it is barely known in the West. It can only be hoped that future historians of medicine will close this conspicuous gap, and investigate Avicenna s medical oeuvre much more fully. (Portmann, Interpreting Avicenna: Critical Essays, p 108) --Peter Portman in Interpreting Avicenna: Critical Essays

The first university in the Europe which put the Canon formally as the base of its medical education was the University of Bologna (the oldest European university) in Italy in the 13th century. Other European universities in which teaching the Canon was presented in their educational programs were Leuven in Belgium, Montpellier in France. and Krakow in Poland. When in the 14th century the first faculty of medicine in the Krakow University of Poland was established, the works of Avicenna were the base of educational materials. It was envisaged in the approved curriculum of the mentioned faculty (approved in 1536 CE) that the students of medicine should study parts of the first and the fourth book of the Canon for their theoretical and practical courses. Moreover, in (1475), Professor Jelonk also published a book as a guide to teach the first book of the Canon, Kitab al- Kolyyat. The various translations and frequent printings of the Canon in Europe was the result of the universal importance of this book and a response to the needs of the medicine educational centers. The first Latin translation of the Canon was by Gerard de Cremona the greatest translator of the school of Toledo in the late 12th century. Andrea Alpago, the physician and orientalist, corrected and edited the translation of Gerard in the early 16th century. This very Latin translation of the Canon and also along with its Arabic text have been printed and published forty times in the Europe including Milan (1473), Padua (1476), Venice (1482, 1507, 1544, 1591, 1708) and Rome (1593). In addition to the Latin language, all or parts of the Canon have been translated and published in European languages such as Russian, Polish, German and English. The Hebrew translation of the Canon was published in Napoli in 1941. In addition to the Canon, other medical works of Avicenna were received by translators and physicians of the West. The Poem on Medicine (al-Urj za fi al-Tibb), now available in English translation, is the summary of Avicenna medicine in poetry form (including 1326 couplets). It was translated by Gerard de Cremona in Latin and published for six times in Europe during the 15th to 17th centuries. The first printing of this translation, along with the annotations by Ibn Rushd, was published in Venice in 1485. The French translation of the mentioned work also (along with Arabic text and Latin translation) were printed and published in 1956. One of the important works of Avicenna is a book about the treatment of kidney diseases which was translated by Andrea Alpago into Latin and published in Venice in 1547. Also, Avicenna On Cardiac Drugs, now available in English translation, was translated into Latin under the title Medicamenta Cordialis by Arnold of Villanova and published in 1482. --Najmabadi, History of Medicine in Iran

. . . both in the Islamic world and Europe was greatly under the influence of Avicenna medicine with the focus on his great Canon. The impact of the Avicennian medicine in the history of medicine has emerged in different dimensions: Treatment, publications and education. [In regard to publications and education,] it was clearly observed that to a great extent, the medical works of Avicenna were received by the author physicians and medical educational centers. Of course, the two educational and publishing dimensions of Avicenna medicine interacted with each other. That is to say that teaching the Canon gave rise to the emergence of various and different publications (including annotations, summaries and translations) about the Canon. These various publications in turn, made the thriving state of teaching the Canon in the medical centers and among the instructors of medicine. The works that had appeared in the world of Islam (with the exception of Andalusia) relying on the works by Avicenna are innumerable, and the superior position of the Canon among the reference medical book in the formal and informal institutions of medical education in India, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Sham, Rum (the Minor Asia) and the Europe is unique as compared with the works of other physicians. Finally, it can be claimed that the medical school of Avicenna is the base and mother of the new medicine, as his Canon was the complete set of the medical views before him and the infrastructure of the medical works after him. --Peter Portman in Interpreting Avicenna: Critical Essays

Edition details

• Publisher: Kazi Publications, Inc.
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1567448585
• ISBN 13: 9781567448580
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1016
• Editor: Laleh Bakhtiar