Abu Ali Ibn Sino

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Abu Ali Ibn Sina

       Abu Ali Ibn Sina, known as Avicenna in the Western World, was born in the village of Afshana near Bukhara, a 2500-year old city in the west of Uzbekistan. He displayed exceptional intellectual prowess as a child (at the age of ten he already knew the Qurani Karim by heart and was proficient in the Arabic classics). His next six years the young man devoted to studying Islam Jurisprudence, Philosophy, Logic and Natural Science and became familiar with Euclid and the Almeagest. Ibn Sina turned his attention to Medicine at the age of 17 years and found it, in his own words, "not difficult". However the scholar was greatly troubled by metaphysical problems and in particular the works of Aristotle. By chance, Ibn Sina obtained a manual on this subject by other celebrated Mavoraunnahr philosopher - Al-Farobiy which solved his difficulties.
       As Al-Juzzhoniy states, Ibn Sina completed 21 major and 24 minor works on philosophy, medicine, theology, geometry, astronomy and other related subjects. Another source (Brockellman) attributes 99 books to Ibn Sina comprising 16 on medicine, 68 on theology and metaphysics, 11 on astronomy and four on verse.
     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 Khitob al-Shifa (Book of Healing), a philosophical encyclopedia based on Aristotelian traditions and the Al-Qanun al-Tibb (The Canon of 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drugs, of which the British Museum possesses several fine manuscripts, is probably the most important, but it remains unpublished.
         Qanun is, of course, by far the largest, most famous and most important of all of Ibn Sina's works. It is considered to be the largest ever written medical reference with more than one million words. Qanun al-Tibb consists of 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 canon remained the world's authority on the subject until the seventeenth century. 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".
    Ibn Sina diagnosed cancer and used surgical operations to remove it. He also attributed stomach ulcers to psychological factors, such as tension and depression, and physical factors affecting the stomach. He attributed infections to traces left in the air by the sick. This led to the use of quarantines to control the spread of infectious diseases.
        An impressive monument to the life and works of the man who became known as the 'doctor of doctors' still stands in his Bukhara Museum, created by Uzbekistan government shortly after gaining Independence in 1991 and his portrait hangs in the Hall of the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Paris.