Islamic Medieval Medical Manuscripts Now on the
Web
NLM Treasures Can be Viewed by the Public for the First
Time
Medieval medicine went high-tech when the National Library of
Medicine recently unveiled its illustrated catalog of Islamic
medical manuscripts on the World Wide Web at www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/arabic/arabichome.html.
"The National Library of Medicine has one of the three greatest
collections of Islamic medical manuscripts in the world (388
treatises in all), and some of them are the only ones in existence,"
says Dr. Emilie Savage-Smith, an American scholar from Oxford
University and one of the world's foremost authorities on Islamic
medicine.
Savage-Smith, who has prepared the illustrated catalog, said that
a manuscript copied in 1094 containing a treatise written by the
famous physician and clinician al-Razi (known to Europeans as
"Rhazes") is the crown jewel of the Library's collection. "It is
believed to be the third oldest Arabic medical manuscript in the
world," said Dr. Elizabeth Fee, Chief of the History of Medicine
Division (HMD). Beautifully scripted, the manuscript's pages are
still in superb condition, as readable as they ever were.
The Library acquired its collection from various sources,
including purchases made from a bequest of Dr. William F. Edgar, a
physician who in 1849 had taken a wagon train over the Oregon Trail
and settled in California. Dr. Philip M. Teigen, Deputy Chief of
HMD, has coordinated the Library's 10-year project, which included
an earlier exhibit and a symposium on Islamic medical manuscripts.
"We then wanted to take the treasures of our Islamic Medicine
collection and make them more widely available to the general
public," he reported.
Publishing them on the World Wide Web seemed to be the best way
to reach the largest number of people." He notes that many of the
manuscripts are beautifully illustrated and very appealing.
Savage-Smith has carefully examined all of NLM's Islamic medical
manuscripts and the illustrated catalogue is the result of her
nearly decade-long endeavor.
The online catalog includes an essay on each of the manuscripts
and has links to a glossary of terms, illustrations, biographical
material, and other pertinent information. It will be published in
three segments. The first section, now on the Web, deals with
medical encyclopedias. Subsequent sections will deal with
pharmaceuticals, plague tracts, veterinary medicine, and general
hygiene. As many as 300 illustrations will be included in the
catalog.
Islamic physicians, inspired by Hippocrates, Galen, and other
Greek and Roman predecessors, made extensive efforts to understand
the remarkably wide range of diseases they faced. In response to
that challenge, they identified many new surgical, medical, and
pharmaceutical treatments.
The manuscripts show that Islamic physicians treated a wide
variety of ailments and diseases, including stomach diseases and
hemorrhoids (very prevalent), promoted dental hygiene, and listed
tips on how to improve sexual desire. There is a treatise on how to
treat forgetfulness (mental exercises were recommended), and their
techniques on eye surgery were so successful that some of them were
still in use in the 20th century.
The Islamic achievements in this area, as well as in anatomy and
surgery, led European teachers and practitioners to translate the
hundreds of Arabic and Persian medical tracts into Latin and then
into French, Italian, and English. In a very real sense, the
European tradition of medical science and practice, which has now
spread world-wide, owes a great debt to Avicenna, al-Nafis, Rhazis,
Abulcasis and other Islamic practitioners and scholars. "Much of our
medical vocabulary comes from the Arabic," says Savage-Smith "and
virtually all European medical manuscripts were based on the Islamic
medical practices."
You can view the collection at: www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/arabic/arabichome.html.
An illuminated opening from The Canon of Medicine (Kitab
al-qanun fi al-tibb) by Ibn Sina. This is a rare complete copy made
in Iran, probably at the beginning of the 15th century. | 
