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medical practice and administered a
special oath to doctors.
The first great
physician of the Arab world was Muhammad
ibn Zakariya al-Razi (860-940 A.D.),
known as Razi by the Arabs and Rhazes by
medieval Europe. Universally considered
one of the outstanding authorities in
medical history, Razi authored more than
two hundred books. His most important
work was the Hawi, an extremely
detailed medical encyclopedia in
twenty-five volumes that was being used
by doctors and students not only in the
East, but also throughout Europe well
into the fifteenth century. Razi best
demonstrated his sharp powers of
observation in an encyclopedia of
therapeutics.
Among his discoveries was the
identification of smallpox and measles,
both of which he treated successfully.
His treatise on smallpox was translated
into several European languages over the
centuries, the last time in 1948, into
English. Razi was the first to use
alcohol as an antiseptic and mercury as a
purgative. In surgery, he used a fine
string made of animal intestine for
sewing up wounds.
Perhaps the most renowned of all Arab
philosopher-scientists was Abu Ah
al-Hussain Ibn Sina (980-1037 A.D.), or
Avicenna. An extremely precocious
youngster, Ibn Sina did not turn to
medicine until he was sixteen, by which
time he had already mastered Islamic law,
philosophy, natural sciences and
mathematics. He was only eighteen when
his fame as a physician was such as to
induce ruling princes to seek his
services. A busy statesman, teacher,
lecturer, profound thinker, poet and
highly prolific writer on subjects as
diverse as geology, music and
mathematics, Ibn Sina treated medicine as
only one of his numerous occupations.
Nevertheless,
he produced sixteen books on medicine,
including the Canun, a work of one
million words. This encyclopedia, dealing
with every then-known disease, treatment
and medication as prescribed by both
Greek and Arab authorities, is generally
regarded as the final codification
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