One of Al-Razi’s books...

One of Al-Razi’s books, Treatise on Smallpox and Measles, was translated into Latin, then English and other European languages, and “went through forty editions between the fifteenth and nineteenth century” (Turner, 1995, p.135). Furthermore, he established separate wards in hospitals for the mentally ill, thereby creating the means for clinical observations of these diseases.

Al-Razi also included in his studies ideas involving human behaviour and he was a pioneer in the field of psychology, thus removing the theories of demons and witchcraft associated with these diseases in the Christian world. By the twelfth century Muslim physicians had produced many works: encyclopaedias, medical biographies, texts on medical ethics, and on specialist topics such as ophthalmology. Ibn An-Nafīs contradicted the theories of blood circulation as put forward by Galen.

He advanced a theory of blood circulation between the compartments of the heart and the lungs, and of pulmonary circulation or lesser circulation. In 1553, three centuries later, a Spaniard Miguel Serveto (Michael Servetus) forwarded a similar theory (Meyerhof, 1935). Ibn An-Nafīs’s theory from the thirteenth century was largely ignored. But he was among the initial precursors to Harvey’s scholarly work that revealed the circulation of blood in the human body.

Muslims using their clinical and surgical knowledge established hospitals. These institutions were far superior to any that existed in ancient times or in lands beyond the Islamic Empire. In medieval Europe most hospitals were attached to religious orders and monasteries. In the Islamic world, during the eighth century the first hospital was built in Damascus; having separate wards for males and females, and special wards for internal diseases, surgery, orthopaedics and other diseases.

📌These hospitals were to become models for hospitals as we know them today (Turner, 1995). Important surgical treatises were written in the tenth and the eleventh centuries in Andalusia by Abu’l-Qasim al-Zahrawi, known in Europe as Abulcais. His book Kitab al-Tasrif (Book of Concessions), a medical almanac, was translated into Latin and used by Muslims and in European medical schools.

The twelfth century physician in Muslim Spain, Ibn Zuhr, known as Avenzoar, wrote works especially in anatomy that had a great influence on medical practice in medieval Europe.

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