BYZANTINE AND ISLAMIC MEDICINE

BYZANTINE AND ISLAMIC MEDICINE
Jonathon Erlen, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh

Galen of Pergamon, ??? AD who was the last great medical figure in the Roman Empire. His writings and beliefs would linger into the 19th century in the United States. He used anatomy by analogy, as had Aristotle, in his human anatomy writings.

HIPPOCRATES OF COS ARISTOTLE GALEN OF PERGAMON
GALENISM HIPPOCRATES OF COS ARISTOTLE GALEN OF PERGAMON Galenism was a combination of the works attributed to the Hippocratic School of medical scholarship, the Aristotelean School of medical Scholarship, and the writings of Galen of Pergamon. Parts of this theoretical approach to disease causation and treatment would still be taught into the 1870’s in some of the United States’ best medical schools.

With the fall of the Roman Empire Western Europe was plunged into centuries of stagnant medical though. The major efforts to preserve the Greco‑Roman medical heritage shifted eastward to the emerging power centers of Byzantium and the Islamic empire.

While there are several dates historians use to mark the official end of the Roman Empire, the final fate of this political unit was clearly apparent in the 4th century A.D., as the various barbarian invasions on the vast holdings of the Roman Empire weakened its political unity.

In 330 A.D. the Roman Emperor Constantine, in an effort to prolong the Roman Empire's life, transferred his capital from Rome to the small city of Byzantium on the banks of the Bosporus.

The political gap between this city, renamed Constantinople, and Rome widened until in 395 A.D. they were permanently divided politically.

The eastern past of the Roman Empire, hereafter, can referred to as the Byzantine Empire, although its leaders still thought of themselves as the remaining segment of the Roman Empire. This Byzantine state would effectively politically control vast sections of the Near East and Asia Minor from this date, 395 A.D., until the final victory of the Ottoman Turks in 1453 at the battle of Constantinople.

The Byzantine Empire was almost totally dominated by a combination of Christian theology and a strong military establishment. The Eastern Orthodox religion was so dominant in all intellectual activities of Byzantium that it hindered, often actually forbidding, a wide range of scholarly endeavors. This also included the area of medical research, which was not condoned by the state government, which actively practiced extremely harsh censorship.

Despite the previously mentioned threat of severe government censorship of their work, Byzantine scholars prodigiously studied, copied, translated, and annotated many of the great medical classics from ancient Greece, Alexandria, and Rome which had made their way to Constantinople.

Place of scholarship during the Byzantine Empire.

Byzantium Controlled the Four Great Centers of Learning
Alexandria Antioch Athens Constantinople

Translators of Greaco‑Roman Medical Writings
Oribasius Aetius of Amida Alexander of Tralles Paul of Aegina Several individuals during the first centuries of the Byzantine Empire need to be credited with preserving for late Medieval and Renaissance Europe the medical writings of Hippocrates of Cos, Aristotle, and Galen of Pergamon.

Although they contributed little or no original medical research and writings, it was the work of these Byzantine scholars as compilers and translators of Greco‑Roman medical writings which preserved this heritage for Western Europe.

Oribasius, who lived between 325 and 403 A. D
Oribasius, who lived between 325 and 403 A.D., was one of the individuals chiefly responsible through his compilations for making Galen of Pergamon and Galenic dogma the focus of late Medieval and Renaissance medicine in Western Europe.

Aetius of Amida, who was the royal physician to the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I during the 6th century AD, was the chief source for the works of Rufus of Ephesus and Leonides in surgery and Soranus and Philumenus in obstetrics and gynecology.

Alexander of Tralles, who lived from 525 to 605 A. D
Alexander of Tralles, who lived from 525 to 605 A.D., also provided a major compendium of earlier medical writings featuring the works of Galen of Pergamon.

Paul of Aegina, who lived in the 7th century AD
Paul of Aegina, who lived in the 7th century AD. His writings show how limited Byzantine medicine had become by his time, as he apologized for the lack of any originality on his part and stated that the ancient medical writers knew all there was to discover concerning health related matters.

When we look at Byzantine day‑to‑day medical practices we find that they were essentially dogmatically based on Christian faith. The Church officially controlled all health practices in Byzantium.

Besides this narrow view of medicine existed a myriad of pseudo‑health‑care providers, including dealers in magical amulets, professional poisoners, sorcerers, and peddlers of healing spells and enchantments.

With religion playing such an all‑encompassing role in Byzantine society, various saints were given curing authority over particular illnesses and parts of the body.

ST. ARTEMIS If you suffered from genital afflictions you would turn to St. Artemis for relief.

For example if you suffered from genital afflictions you would turn to St. Artemis for relief.

In such a society, which did not believe in the use of drugs nor in the value of studying sick patients, there was little need for formally trained physicians. Sickness and death were seen strictly as divine visitations and any healer daring to challenge this religious dogma faced the possibility of harsh penalties for being declared a heretic.

In summary it can be said that for the general history of medicine, Byzantium's only significant contributions were the massive compilations and translations of Greco‑Roman medical writings, many of which only reached Western Europe after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453.

After the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 a number of able Byzantine scholars fled from the invading Turks to Western Europe, where they translated these encyclopedic texts from Greek into Latin for the emerging European universities. These works included the medical studies based on Galenism which would be the basis of European university medical education past the Renaissance.

We now turn to a civilization which had a much greater impact, both during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, on the evolution of Western European medical theory and practices.

The Islamic Empire was a major force in the growth of Western European medicine, both in terms of preserving, to a much greater extent than had Byzantium, the important Greco‑Roman medical works, and in providing new ideas in the areas of pharmacology, medical diagnosis, and hospital design and management.

Prior to the creation of the Islamic Empire, which was centered in the area now refered to as the Middle East, the various tribes of the Arab population lived in a few small towns along the North African Mediterranean coast or as nomadic tribes wandering in an unsettled pastoral life‑style. Religious life was extremely fragmented, as the various tribal units worshipped a pantheon of some 300 gods, while being surrounded by the major religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Zorastrianism.

Into this unstable environment was born, in 570 A. D
Into this unstable environment was born, in 570 A.D., Mohammed, who was to reshape the entire religious and socio‑political environment throughout that portion of the world. Picture and part of the text were excluded by Supercourse Team according Disclaimer:

By the time of Mohammed’s death in 632 AD he had, through his religious teachings, successfully unified most of the tribes of Arabia, both politically, militarily and spiritually. Picture and part of the text were excluded by Supercourse Team according Disclaimer:

The next 3 centuries saw one of the most astonishing growths of an empire known to world history. Starting from the small walled town of Medina, Moslem rule was extended some 4,000 miles: to the West over Egypt, north Africa, and most of Spain; to the north into Syria, Armenia, and the Caucasus; to the northeast the Islamic armies conquered Persia, Mesopotamia, and Afghanistan; and in the Far East it even made inroads into India.

One of the unusual features of this conquest was that the Moslem invasion, unlike those conducted by the earlier empires of Rome and Byzantium, left intact the seats of learning which they had conquered. This fact was pivotal in the Islamic contributions to medical science, particularly as preservers of Greco‑Roman medicine.

CHURCH COUNCIL OF NICEA, HELD IN 325 A.D.
This Council had attempted to define the Catholic religion in both the Western and Eastern spheres of the Roman Empire, but there were still many heatedly debated disputes continuing in the Eastern Branch of the Church. About this time, a figure emerged in Byzantium who would directly influence the transfer of ancient medical texts, through the future Islamic empire, to Western Europe.

Nestorius was born near Mt. Taurus in Armenia
Nestorius was born near Mt. Taurus in Armenia. He became a priest and, in 428 AD, he was appointed to be the Patriarch of Constantinople. It was at this time that Nestorius and his followers came into direct conflict with the Eastern Orthodox leaders over his religious views.

Because of his supposed heretical doctrine, the Eastern Orthodox Church, at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD, excommunicated Nestorius and his fellow believers, who became known as the Nestorians.

The Nestorians migrated from Constantinople to Edessa, where the Persians had established a major school. The Nestorians remained in Edessa, accumulating and translating Greek texts until the Eastern Church forced them again to flee in 489 AD.

The Nestorians fled to southwest Persia, to a city called Jundishapur
The Nestorians fled to southwest Persia, to a city called Jundishapur. It was here that the Nestorians flourished until the 10th century AD. During these 4 centuries Jundishapur became the intellectual center of the Western world.

JUNDISHAPUR Jundishapur was captured by the Islamic empire in 636 AD. The Moslems, who greatly respected the work of the Nestorian school, which by this time had been expanded to include a medical school and a major hospital, made it the intellectual center of their expanding empire.

Jundishapur became the major site for the translation of Greek and Hellenistic manuscripts, first from Greek into Syriac, and then from Syriac into Arabic, which was the official language of the Moslem world. The Nestorians continued their translating efforts and welcomed into their scholarly community the leading figures from the Greek neo‑Platonic schools in Athens, who had been driven out of Athens when their institutions had been closed by the Eastern Church in 529 A.D. Along with these 2 groups of scholars, Jundishapur also attracted many of the leading Jewish intellectuals who were fluent in a variety of languages, as well as many learned men from China and India, who were drawn to Jundishapur by the wide ranging travels of the Nestorian missionaries.

JUNDISHAPUR We can credit the scholars at the school in Jundishapur, from the 6th through the 10th centuries, as being the key source in the preservation and eventual transmission of the earlier Greaco‑Roman medical texts to Western Europe. The Moslem empire actively pursued the acquisition of these earlier studies.

It was the compiling and translating efforts of generations of scholars, first at Jundishapur and later continuing at Baghdad, which saved many of the Greco‑Roman medical studies known today.

ISLAM TO EUROPE How did this ancient medical wisdom finally reach Medieval Europe?

One of the major sources of contact took place in Southern Europe during the time that the Muslims occupied much of Spain. The Islamic revolution crossed the Mediterranean Sea at the Straits of Gibraltar, entering Spain in 711 AD.

The Islamic invasion of Europe pushed inland as far as Western France, where their advance was finally halted in 732 AD by Charles Martel at the famous Battle of Tours.

During the centuries that they maintained control over Spain the Muslims created 2 great medical centers. One was located in the city of Cordoba, which by the 10th century had 1 million inhabitants and was the most civilized city in Western Europe. Cordoba contained 300 mosques, with each housing a school, 70 libraries, 900 public baths, and 50 hospitals, along with a major university.

St. Sophia Church in Cordova under Islamic rule.

Overview of Cordova with its Islamic tradition.

After Cordoba was destroyed in the 11th century AD by an invasion of the Berbers from Northern Africa, the Islamic center of learning shifted to the city of Toledo, which attracted many of the best scholars from all parts of Europe.

After Cordoba was destroyed in the 11th century by an invasion of the Berbers from Northern Africa, the Islamic center of learning shifted to the city of Toledo, which attracted many of the best scholars from all parts of Europe.

Hospital de Santa Cruz in early Toledo-Spain run under Islamic administration.

A second point of contact between Islam and Western Europe was in the port city of Sicily.

A second point of contact between Islam and Western Europe was in Sicily.

In this major trading center Greeks, Muslims, and Europeans co‑existed in peace, and it was in Sicily that many of the great ancient texts which had previously been translated into Arabic were now translated into Latin, thus making them available for the emerging universities in Western Europe.

The third major source for transmitting the ancient medical works from Islam to Western Europe was the work of a few individuals who made a career of translating the Greek and Arabic texts into Latin.

The most renowned of these figures was Constantinus Africanus, Constantine the African, who lived from 1018 to 1087 AD. He was a native of Carthage in North Africa, who practiced medicine and traveled widely in both the Islamic Empire and Western Europe.

He is best remembered for translating the Arabic studies Haly Abbas and some of the writings of Hippocrates of Cos and Galen of Pergamon into Latin.

It was through these translations that Constantinus helped impose Islamic modes of medical thought on Western Europe, as his translations were used as some of the major medical texts, from the 12th through the 17th centuries AD, in most of the European medical schools.

Unlike the case of Byzantium, we can credit the Islamic empire with doing considerably more than the important task of preserving Greco‑Roman medical works. The Muslim world produced a number of outstanding medical scholars whose writings had a tremendous impact on Medieval and Renaissance European medical theory and practice.

Rhazes lived from 850 to 932 AD. He produced major treatises on surgery which were followed in Western Europe until the work of Ambroise Pare in the 16th century.

Ambroise Pare, 1510 – 20 December 1590, was a French surgeon
Ambroise Pare, 1510 – 20 December 1590, was a French surgeon. He was the great official royal surgeon for the kings Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III and is considered as one of the fathers of surgery. He was a leader in surgical techniques and battlefield medicine, especially the treatment of wounds. He was also an anatomist and the inventor of several surgical instruments.

Rhazes lived from 850 to 932 AD. He produced major treatises on surgery which were followed in Western Europe for over 500 years.

Rhazes wrote over 200 treatises on various medical specialties, with his most famous being a 20 volume encyclopedic work combining his own professional experiences with the medical wisdom from Greece, India, Rome and Persia. His major research contribution was the ability to differentiate between smallpox and measles, which he produced in 910 AD.

His findings were still being repeated almost verbatim by the creator of modern internal medicine, Sir William Osler, July 12, 1849 – December 29, 1919, in his famous textbook, Principles and Practice of Medicine in 1892, the first modern textbook of internal medicine.

An even more voluminous and well‑read writer, though not as creative as Rhazes, was Avicenna, who lived between 980 and 1037 AD.

He studied medicine at the great medical school and hospital in Baghdad and became a practitioner at the age of 16.

He wrote a prodigious amount on both medicine and philosophy.

Avicenna's major medical text, The Cannon of Medicine, which contained 5 sections, became the basis for medical education in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, much as students today refer to Harrisons’ textbook on internal medicine.

Haly Abbas, who died in 994 AD, was a famous doctor and teacher whose works were translated into Latin by Constantine the African.

He wrote an important volume entitled, The Perfect Book of the Art of Medicine, which served, along with Avicenna's Cannon of Medicine, as a standard text in European medical schools for centuries. Haly Abbas' treatise was 1st. translated into Latin by Constantinus Africanus, and was continually recopied through the 16th century, with the last major edition appearing in Lyon in 1523 AD.

The fourth major Islamic medical figure may be better known to you for his important religious and philosophical writings. Rabbi Moses Maimonides, who lived from 1135 to 1204 AD, was the greatest Jewish‑Arab scholar of this period.

His medical fame grew until he became royal physician to the Sultan Saladin, whose struggles against the Crusaders led by Richard the Lion Hearted, have been retold in books and movies, such as the various versions of the story of Robin Hood.

Maimonides main medical text, Medical Aphorisms, was widely respected and used in Western European medical education This compilation of disease descriptions and cures combined his own medical wisdom with the earlier writings of Hippocrates of Cos, Galen of Pergamon, and Avicenna.

The Oath of Maimonides is still used in some American medical schools in the 21st century.

Maimonides’ text on the treatment of the mentally ill, Guide to the Perplexed, is considered by some the first modern text on psychiatry.

When we look at the everyday Islamic practice of medicine and other forms of health care, we find a system established to meet the needs of a large segment of the urban Islamic populace, not just the upper-class, which had been the pattern in all previous societies. All large cities in the Islamic empire had a number of hospitals which served the general public.

These institutions also functioned as the centers of medical education, much like today in a modern medical educational environment, as medical students followed preceptors on rounds to observe the treatment of patients.

Islamic physician treating a patient in a hospital setting.

Hospital in Divrig, Turkey, in 1156 A.D.

Dar Us-Sifa Hospital of Bayazid II, Edirne, Turkey, begun in 1471 A.D.

Muslim hospitals were models of humane kindness, especially in their handling of the mentally ill. A large hospital would normally contain, besides the patients' bed areas: lecture halls, libraries, chapels, and dispensaries.

Besides doctors the hospital staff also included nurses of both sexes, musicians to lull patients to sleep, and storytellers to amuse the sick.

When poor patients were released, they were often given money by the hospital to hold them over until they were well enough to return to work.

These facets of hospital care greatly impressed the European visitors during the Crusades, but had no real impact on European hospital development.

Other major advances over Western European medicine at that time were the Islamic contributions in the fields of pharmacy and pharmacology. The first major pharmacy shops were in the Islamic cities.

We can credit Islamic medicine with developing the early drug store and the concept of the sugar‑coated pill. Islamic pharmacology introduced a large number of useful herbal and chemical drugs.

An example of an Islamic herbal text, many of reached Europe in the Renaissance and impacted their self help medical texts.

This field was particularly important to the Muslims because of the religious limitations placed on doctors by the Koran, the Muslims' holy book, that required physicians rely primarily on dietary, rest, and drug therapies rather than more invasive healing techniques.

Since dissection of the human corpse was strictly forbidden by the Koran, surgery was basically restricted to cauterizing injuries and the subspecialty of ophthalmic surgery, for which the Islamic doctors were justly famous. Eye diseases and injuries were extremely prevalent in the Near East, and the Islamic doctors became very knowledgeable in their treatment. Specialty hospitals were established solely to treat ophthalmologic health problems.

Unlike in ancient Greece, Alexandria, and Rome, where the practice of medicine had been considered more a trade than a profession, many physicians in the Islamic empire were highly respected by the public. The physicians who catered to the upper class were paid extravagant salaries and were thus able to take 1 or 2 days a week to work for no fees in the hospitals treating the poor. This was the first civilization to provide for many of the health needs of its urban general public.

Public health was much more advanced in the Islamic world of this period than in Western Europe or Byzantium. The Koran prescribed strict rules of personal hygiene for all people, including frequent bathing and the wearing of clean clothes. Dietary restrictions forbid the eating of pork, thus protecting the populace from the possible health hazard of triganosis, which was not uncommon in Western European towns of this period.

Muhtasib Community public health was overseen by a government official called the Muhtasib. This individual, who was not a physician, had a wide range of responsibilities concerning preserving the public's health.

In general it can be said that the Muhtasib was in charge of the regulations concerning the quality of food and drink, the cleanliness of the public baths, and infectious disease control.

ABATTOIR All slaughtering of publicly sold meat was conducted in an official center, the abattoir, and the tails of animals were left on the meat being sold so that the customers could tell what type of meat they were purchasing.

MUDTASIB The written penalties for failing to comply with the rules administered by the muhtasib were extremely severe. For instance, a baker could be thrown into his own oven if he was caught selling poisonous corn, and a cook could be boiled in his own cauldron if the authorities discovered him selling carrion or putrid meat. Despite these stern penalties it is doubtful how effectively the mutaship could police his large administrative territory, though these laws do illustrate that the government did appreciate the importance of high quality foods and the necessity of proper hygiene in public buildings.

Hakim Bashi Physicians in a community were regulated by the Hakim Bashi, or chief physician. When a doctor was called upon to treat the sick, he would first make a diagnosis of the case and then write out this diagnosis and his prescription for the case, giving a copy to the ailing patient or their family.

HAKIM BASHI If the patient or family were unsatisfied by the care given by the physician, they could take this document to the local Hakim Bashi, who would decide on the merits of the complaint. If this official ruled in favor of the patient he might say something like the following quotation: "Exact the blood money for your kinsman from the physician, for it is he who slew him by his poor skill and negligence." If on the other hand, the ruling favored the doctor, then the patient was required to pay the physician's fees, which could be quite exorbitant.

Thus we can see that Islamic medicine and health care was far superior to that which existed in Western Europe, not only at this time, but for many centuries to come. 105

We can credit the Islamic Empire with being a highly advanced system which well served the health needs of the vast majority of its urban populace throughout this far flung empire for the better part of 5 centuries. In terms of Western medicine, the Islamic Empire deserves high praise for both its role as a transmitter of the ancient Greco‑Roman medical texts, as well as for the innovative advances in medical diagnosis, hospital construction and administration, and in the fields of pharmacy and pharmacology. While Europe was basically in the medical Dark Ages, Islamic medical science was the shinning light of medicine, from the 7th through the 12th centuries AD.

BYZANTINE AND ISLAMIC MEDICINE

Similar presentations

Presentation on theme: "BYZANTINE AND ISLAMIC MEDICINE"— Presentation transcript:

Similar presentations

About project

Feedback

Log in

Auth with social network:

BYZANTINE AND ISLAMIC MEDICINE

Similar presentations

Presentation on theme: "BYZANTINE AND ISLAMIC MEDICINE"— Presentation transcript:

Similar presentations

About project

Feedback