Health science among the Arabs
The Arabs were not ignorant of the importance of maintaining good health. They knew very well that the science of health teaches us ways to prevent diseases that medicine cannot cure. Their health methods have been good since ancient times. What the Qur’an commands regarding ablution and abstaining from drinking alcohol, and what the people of hot countries have become accustomed to in preferring plant foods over animal foods, is the height of wisdom. There is nothing to criticize in what is attributed to the Prophet of health commandments.
It was the custom of Arab authors to summarize their health recommendations in comprehensive words that were easy to memorize. An Arab doctor in the ninth century AD said:
Nothing is more harmful to an old man than having a beautiful slave girl and a skilled cook.
It appears that the Arab hospitals that were established in the past were better in terms of health than our modern hospitals; they were spacious, had plenty of air, and abundant water.
When Al-Razi was tasked with choosing the best neighborhood in Baghdad to build a hospital, he resorted to a method that even the proponents of the modern microbe theory would not deny. He hung a piece of meat in each neighborhood of the capital and declared that the best neighborhood to build a hospital in was the one where the hung piece of meat spoiled later than in the other neighborhoods.
Arab hospitals, like those in Europe today, were shelters for the sick and places for students to study. Students received their lessons in the beds of patients more than they received them from books, and European universities in the Middle Ages imitated them only slightly.
The Arabs established hospitals for those suffering from certain diseases, such as the insane. The Arabs, as we do, had charitable societies that treated poor patients for free on certain days. Doctors and medicines were sent from time to time to less important places that did not deserve a hospital.
The Arabs were not ignorant of the impact of the healthy climate. Ibn Rushd stated in his commentaries on Ibn Sina’s books the impact of the region on tuberculosis, and he advised those afflicted with it, as they advise now, to spend the winter in the Arabian Peninsula and Nubia. Today we see those afflicted with tuberculosis being sent, for the most part, to the Nile valleys near Nubia.
The teachings of the School of Salerm contain valuable advice on health. No one is unaware that this school, which was considered the first school in Europe for a long time, owes its fame to the Arabs. When the Normans took control of Sicily and part of Italy in the middle of the eleventh century AD, they treated the medical school established by the Arabs with the same great care they treated Islamic institutes. Constantine the African, who was an Arab from Carthage, was appointed its head, and he translated the most important Arab medical books into Latin. From these books, the teachings of the School of Salerm were taken, and they remained the reason for its outstanding fame for quite some time.
The Arabs relied heavily on health science to treat diseases, and on natural methods, and nothing else. Medicine based on natural healing, which modern science appears to have settled on, seems likely to me. It seems likely that Arab medicine in the tenth century AD did not lead to more deaths than it does today.
Arab progress in medicine
The most important Arab advances in the world of medicine were in surgery, disease description, types of medicines, and pharmacology. The Arabs developed several methods, some of which modern medicine is now returning to after being neglected for many centuries, such as the use of cold water to treat typhoid fever.
Medicine owes the Arabs many drugs, such as salikha, Meccan senna, rhubarb, tamarind, nutmeg, crimson, camphor, alcohol, etc. It also owes them the art of pharmacy and many preparations that are still used, such as drinks, licks, plasters, ointments, ointments, distilled water, etc. Medicine also owes them novel methods of treatment, which have been returned to as modern discoveries after having been forgotten for a long time. Among these methods is the method of plants absorbing some medicines, as Ibn Zuhr did, who treated patients suffering from constipation by feeding them grapes infused with some laxatives.
The science of surgery also owes many of its basic innovations to the Arabs, and their books on it remained a reference for study in medical schools until very recently. Among these is that the Arabs knew in the eleventh century AD how to treat cataracts by lowering or removing the lens, and they knew the process of crushing stones, which Abu al-Qasim clearly described, and they knew how to pour cold water to stop bleeding, and they knew caustics and wicks, etc.
They knew the sedative, which was thought to be a modern invention, by using darnel to put the patient to sleep before painful operations until he loses consciousness and his senses.
