Mones Abu-Asab - Avicennas Medicine: A New Translation of the 11th-Century Canon with Practical Applications for Integrative Health Care

To the continuum of people who have kept alive the quest for knowledge over thousands of years

To my father, Mohamed Salah, and my mother, Warda

Hakima Amri

Avicenna links ancient physicians with modern medicine. His devotion to the search for truth set the standard for all times. The cultures of both East and West are indebted to this great physician and philosopher.

RICHARD DEAN SMITH, AVICENNA AND THE CANNON OF MEDICINE: A MILLENNIAL TRIBUTE, WESTERN JOURNAL OF MEDICINE 133 (1980): 36770

AVICENNAS
MEDICINE

Avicennas Medicine represents a breath of fresh air to those interested in the history of Western medicine. It is presented in a consistently clear and concise form that makes Avicennas writings accessible to the English reader. In addition, a number of chapters at the beginning of the book act as a primer in the principles of Graeco-Arabic Medicine. Avicennas Medicine is one of the most interesting and exciting volumes that has come my way in a long time. It provides insight into a medicine that is a historical part of the development of modern Western medicine and an ethnic traditional medicine that is still more or less practiced on the Indian subcontinent and in some parts of the Middle East. This may well serve to rekindle a resurgence of interest in Avicennas medicine in the West; something it surely deserves.

PAUL HYSEN, PH.D., DOCTOR OF NATUROPATHY AND CHIROPRACTIC

Avicennas Canon is not only the most important and influential single text in the history of medicine, it is also the main work of reference for a major traditional school of medicine that is still alive and has much to teach us today. The present translation, Avicennas Medicine, is welcome not only because it makes many of the ideas of the Canon accessible in English but also because it deals with practical applications of its principles for those drawn to holistic or integrative medicine wherever they might be.

SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR, AUTHOR OF SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION IN ISLAM AND PROFESSOR OF ISLAMIC STUDIES AT GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

The next time you visit your physician, whisper a prayer of thanks to Avicenna, because many of the foundations of modern medicineempirical observation, objectivity, and rationalismsurfaced through his towering genius a millennium ago. Avicennas Medicine is a valuable link in medicines rich history. As the authors make clear in this marvelous translation, Avicennas relevance to our era has not been exhausted.

LARRY DOSSEY, M.D., AUTHOR OF HEALING WORDS AND ONE MIND

FOREWORD

In Defense of Medical Tradition

Alain Touwaide

One millennium ago Ab Al al-Husain ibn Abdullh ibn Sn (9801037), more commonly known as ibn Sn or Avicenna according to the medieval adaptation of his name, was in Gurgan, near the Caspian Sea. As he wrote in his autobiography, he had devoted himself to studying the textsthe original and the commentariesin the natural sciences and metaphysics, and the gates of knowledge began opening.

His lifetime was an extraordinary period for knowledge. After the Arabic Empire was created, it laid down the foundations of a new science and scientific culture by assimilating the legacy of all the surrounding polities, not only Byzantium, India, and Persia but also the mosaic of the many others in the vast area ranging from China in the East to Andalusia in the West. During the last decades of the tenth century, corresponding to ibn Sns youth, scientists in all disciplines in the Arabic World had already produced new works that not only assimilated their heritage but also led it in new directions.

ibn Sn was not different. As he stated in his autobiography, after he assimilated many other scientific disciplines he sought to know medicine and... read the books on it. He quickly excelled in it in a very short time, to the point that distinguished physicians began to read the science of medicine under him. He did not limit himself to theoretical study and teaching, but he also cared for the sick and acquired knowledge of medical treatments that cannot be described and can be learned only from practice.

He then started to write down what he knew. This resulted in the Qnn, which he began to compile one millennium ago. Corresponding to the description he himself made of his activity, the Qnn is not a theoretical manual that exposes all the medical knowledge available at that time. Rather, it presents available medical theories and alsoif not above allsubmits them to a critical analysis that is not only theoretical but is also informed by his personal experience and observations from treating patients.

ibn Sns way of working recalls his years of learning. He didnt read only the texts, as he stated, but he also read the commentaries on the texts, which is the critical evaluation of received knowledge. This is the method in the Qnn, which brings together available knowledge and its analysis through clinical experience.

The work had an extraordinary Fortuna, certainly resulting from its merging of received knowledge and personal analysis. It diffused all over the Mediterranean in manuscript form before printing; it was translated into Latin in the thirteenth century; it circulated widely in the Late Middle Ages; and it was printed as early as 1472 (Book 3) with no less than fourteen different editions by the end of the fifteenth century. Even the Greek medical textsof which the Qnn was the heirwere not printed before 1499 (Dioscorides, De materia medica) and even 1525 (Galen, Opera omnia). In Medieval universities, the Qnn was a core text, and it remained so until late in the sixteenth century, even in the midst of the strong revival of Greek medicine actively promoted by the Ferrarese physician and classical scholar Nicolao Leoniceno (14281524). At the most prestigious university of Montpellier, for example, the Qnn was used until the 1540s and was replaced by Greek textbooks only after the bishop protector of the university brought Greek texts back from Venice, where he had been the Ambassador to the French king Franois I.

Avicennas far-reaching and enduring influence is evident in these stamps from around the world, commemorating Avicennas millennial birthday in the 20th century. From top left: Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, Dubai, Republic of the Comoro Islands, Kuwait, Tunisia, Mali, France, Germany, Turkey, Algeria, Egypt, and Poland.

A brilliant polymath, ibn Sn was considered as al-Shaikh al-Raisthe Prince of Philosophersin his own lifetime. He summed up all available medical knowledge, submitted it to scrutiny through careful and repeated clinical observations, and duly recorded, compared, and studied resulting data in order to distinguish recurrent facts and correlations. When necessary, he departed from received knowledge, which he did not credit with special authority because of its antiquity, the prestige and aura of its author, or any other reason. However he did not reject received knowledge