Have you ever got the feeling?
During study, you’re buried in textbooks. Robbins Pathology, Gray’s Anatomy, Guyton Physiology.
The names are all Western.
Is there no medical history between Galen and Renaissance period?
It has a gap of a thousand years and no one seems to talk about it. I felt that several times. A weird disconnect.
“Where was our people in this tale?” As a Muslim medical student I wondered. “was we were just spectators?
Then I picked up a book. ‘Medieval Islamic Medicine’ by Peter pormann. It actually blew my mind. It was not a lesson in history. I could connect the dots.
This book has also made me open my eyes to the place where doctors were not just the scientists. They were polymaths. They were believers.
They were bound to heal since they had been sent a message of God to seek knowledge. To show compassion. To serve humanity.
They built famous hospitals referred to as Bimaristans. These weren’t just buildings. The charity financed the mercy centres which were free of charge.
The scholars like Ahmed Ragab prove that these companies preconditioned a direct replica of the Islamic ideals of charity and social welfare.
Sound like a modern ideal? They practised it in Baghdad in 9th century. Such giants as Al-Razi who was a genius clinician, made the first impeding accounts, which were right, of small pox and measles.
And Ibn Sina, writer of the textbook The Canon of Medicine, which was the textbook of medicine during a time of over 600 years.
I read about a surgeon who was termed the father of Surgery. That is the Al-Zahrawi, a Muslim scholar, who sketched surgery tools on which we implement the ideas until today.
However, the best part is here. They saw no conflict that existed between their science and their religion. This inspired them because of their faith as explained in detail by Emilie Savage-Smith.
It tested them, to test their experiment, to be creative. What made them great scientists was the injunction of the study of the world in Quran. They were amazing curers according to the states of the Prophet (PBUH) on the issue of compassion. This went far enough to the point of an official code of ethics, which had been defined several hundred years ago by doctors like Al-Ruhawi before the modern-day utterances.
This is my exploration of this marvellous history. We shall speak of their magnificent hospitals, their severe rules of practice, their discoveries, and even what the Prophetic Medicine has to say.
It is not the question of returning to the past. It is a birth of a tradition that can give us some hope of the future.
It is one thing of seeking to find out what it is like to be a healer, in the broadest sense of this word.
So, join me. Back into our Golden Age. I believe we will get aboard there to provide ourselves with some kind of action..
Chapter 1:
