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Ibn Sina was born in 980 C.E. in the
village of Afshana near Bukhara which today is located in the far
south of Russia. His father, Abdullah, an adherent of the Ismaili
sect, was from Balkh and his mother from a village near Bukhara.
In any age Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna, would have
been a giant among giants. He displayed exceptional intellectual
prowess as a child and at the age of ten was already proficient in
the Qur'an and the Arabic classics. During the next six years he
devoted himself to Muslim Jurisprudence, Philosophy and Natural
Science and studied Logic, Euclid, and the Almeagest.
He turned his attention to Medicine at the age of 17 years and
found it, in his own words, "not difficult". However he was
greatly troubled by metaphysical problems and in particular the
works of Aristotle. By chance, he obtained a manual on this
subject by the celebrated philosopher al-Farabi which solved his
difficulties.
By the age of 18 he had built up a reputation as a physician and
was summoned to attend the Samani ruler Nuh ibn Mansur (reigned
976-997 C.E.), who, in gratitude for Ibn Sina's services, allowed
him to make free use of the royal library, which contained many
rare and even unique books. Endowed with great powers of absorbing
and retaining knowledge, this Muslim scholar devoured the contents
of the library and at the age of 21 was in a position to compose
his first book.
At about the same time he lost his
father and soon afterwards left Bukhara and wandered westwards. He
entered the services of Ali ibn Ma'mun, the ruler of Khiva, for a
while, but ultimately fled to avoid being kidnapped by the Sultan
Mahmud of Ghazna. After many wanderings he came to Jurjan, near
the Caspian Sea, attracted by the fame of its ruler, Qabus, as a
patron of learning. Unfortunately Ibn Sina's arrival almost
coincided with the deposition and murder of this ruler. At Jurjan,
Ibn Sina lectured on logic and astronomy and wrote the first part
of the Qanun, his greatest work.
He then moved to Ray, near modern
Teheran and established a busy medical practice. When Ray was
besieged, Ibn Sina fled to Hamadan where he cured Amir
Shamsud-Dawala of colic and was made Prime Minister. A mutiny of
soldiers against him caused his dismissal and imprisonment, but
subsequently the Amir, being again attacked by the colic, summoned
him back, apologised and reinstated him! His life at this time was
very strenuous: during the day he was busy with the Amir's
services, while a great deal of the night was passed in lecturing
and dictating notes for his books. Students would gather in his
home and read parts of his two great books, the Shifa and the
Qanun, already composed.
Following the death of the Amir, Ibn
Sina fled to Isfahan after a few brushes with the law, including a
period in prison. He spent his final years in the services of the
ruler of the city, Ala al-Daula whom he advised on scientific and
literary matters and accompanied on military campaigns.
Friends advised him to slow down and take life in moderation, but
this was not in character. "I prefer a short life with width to a
narrow one with length", he would reply. Worn out by hard work and
hard living, Ibn Sina died in 1036/1 at a comparatively early age
of 58 years. He was buried in Hamadan where his grave is still
shown.
Al-Qifti states that Ibn Sina completed 21 major and 24 minor
works on philosophy, medicine, theology, geometry, astronomy and
the like. Another source (Brockelmann) attributes 99 books to Ibn
Sina comprising 16 on medicine, 68 on theology and metaphysics 11
on astronomy and four on verse. Most of these were in Arabic; but
in his native Persian he wrote a large manual on philosophical
science entitled Danish-naama-i-Alai and a small treatise on the
pulse.
His most celebrated Arabic poem describes the descent of Soul into
the Body from the Higher Sphere. Among his scientific works, the
leading two are the Kitab al-Shifa (Book of Healing), a
philosophical encyclopaedia based upon Aristotelian traditions and
the al-Qanun al-Tibb which represents the final categorisation of
Greco-Arabian thoughts on Medicine.
Of Ibn Sina's 16 medical works,
eight are versified treatises on such matter as the 25 signs
indicating the fatal termination of illnesses, hygienic precepts,
proved remedies, anatomical memoranda etc. Amongst his prose
works, after the great Qanun, the treatise on cardiac drugs, of
which the British Museum possesses several fine manuscripts, is
probably the most important, but it remains unpublished.
The Qanun is, of course, by far the
largest, most famous and most important of Ibn Sina's works. The
work contains about one million words and like most Arabic books,
is elaborately divided and subdivided. The main division is into
five books, of which the first deals with general principles; the
second with simple drugs arranged alphabetically; the third with
diseases of particular organs and members of the body from the
head to the foot; the fourth with diseases which though local in
their inception spread to other parts of the body, such as fevers
and the fifth with compound medicines.
The Qanun distinguishes
mediastinitis from pleurisy and recognises the contagious nature
of phthisis (tuberculosis of the lung) and the spread of disease
by water and soil. It gives a scientific diagnosis of
ankylostomiasis and attributes the condition to an intestinal
worm. The Qanun points out the importance of dietetics, the
influence of climate and environment on health and the surgical
use of oral anaesthetics.
Ibn Sina advised surgeons to treat
cancer in its earliest stages, ensuring the removal of all the
diseased tissue. The Qanun's materia medica considers some 760
drugs, with comments on their application and effectiveness. He
recommended the testing of a new drug on animals and humans prior
to general use.
Ibn Sina noted the close
relationship between emotions and the physical condition and felt
that music had a definite physical and psychological effect on
patients. Of the many psychological disorders that he described in
the Qanun, one is of unusual interest: love sickness! ibn Sina is
reputed to have diagnosed this condition in a Prince in Jurjan who
lay sick and whose malady had baffled local doctors. Ibn Sina
noted a fluttering in the Prince's pulse when the address and name
of his beloved were mentioned. The great doctor had a simple
remedy: unite the sufferer with the beloved.
The Arabic text of the Qanun was
published in Rome in 1593 and was therefore one of the earliest
Arabic books to see print. It was translated into Latin by Gerard
of Cremona in the 12th century. This 'Canon', with its
encyclopaedic content, its systematic arrangement and
philosophical plan, soon worked its way into a position of
pre-eminence in the medical literature of the age displacing the
works of Galen, al-Razi and al-Majusi, and becoming the text book
for medical education in the schools of Europe.
In the last 30 years of the 15th
century it passed through 15 Latin editions and one Hebrew. In
recent years, a partial translation into English was made. From
the 12th-17th century, the Qanun served as the chief guide to
Medical Science in the West and is said to have influenced
Leonardo da Vinci. In the words of Dr. William Osler, the Qanun
has remained "a medical bible for a longer time than any other
work".
Despite such glorious tributes to
his work, Ibn Sina is rarely remembered in the West today and his
fundamental contributions to Medicine and the European reawakening
goes largely unrecognised. However, in the museum at Bukhara,
there are displays showing many of his writings, surgical
instruments from the period and paintings of patients undergoing
treatment. An impressive monument to the life and works of the man
who became known as the 'doctor of doctors' still stands outside
Bukhara museum and his portrait hangs in the Hall of the Faculty
of Medicine in the University of Paris.
Hamza Sheth is a
co-researcher at post graduation level. Department of
Pharmacology, Luqman college of Pharmacy, Gulbarga. Karnataka
state.
He blogs at
http://hamzarx.blogspot.com
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