Islamic Medicine (Islamic Surveys) (Paperback)

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A concise and authoritative guide to this vast and complex subject. A concise and authoritative guide to this vast and complex subject.

Product Description

This highly readable survey describes the development of Islamic medicine and its influence on Western medical thought. It explains the main features of Islamic medicine: its system of human physiology; its ideas about the nature of disease; its rules for diet and the use of drugs; and its relationship with astrology and the occult.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 138 pages
• Publisher: Edinburgh Univ Pr (September 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0748609075
• ISBN-13: 978-0748609079
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #4,407,755 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Basic Introduction, January 7, 2001

By	Gary Reger (West Hartford, CT USA) - See all my reviews

In this short book (only 114 pages of text, with a few illustrations) Manfred Ullmann, one of the world's leading experts on the scientific literature of the Arabic-speaking world in the medieval period, offers an introduction to Arabic-language writings about medicine. After a short discussion of pre-Islamic medical practices in the Arabian peninsula, Ullmann focuses on the impact of the translation of Greek medical writings into Arabic, sometimes directly from Greek, sometimes via Syriac or Persian intermediaries. He then proceeds to treat physiology, anatomy, pathology, transmission of diseases and the plague, dietetics and pharmacology, and the relation between medicine and magic in a few short chapters. His chief guide is *Al-Kitab al-Malaki* of Majusi, who died between 982 and 995.

It must have been a despairing task to write this book. The writings left behind by medieval Arab physicians form an enormous corpus, much of which has been printed in atrocious, unreliable editions, or remains only in manuscript. In choosing Majusi as his guide, Ullmann reduced the task to manageable proportions. But he thereby also sacrificed much. Majusi depended heavily on the works of Galen, and aimed to produce a comprehensive handbook; he thus represents the chief, purely "scientific" branch of Islamic medicine. Competing traditions receive short shrift, and there is virtually nothing about the actual practice of medicine (only a handful of cases histories -- the feature that makes the Hippokratic *Epidemics* still such compelling reading today -- appear in connection with treatment of the plague) or about medicine in its social and cultural context. These omissions result also in part from Ullmann's slightly old-fashioned approach, evident again in his comparisons of medieval medical knowledge with our own. Nor does Ullmann have much to say about the contribution of Persian, Egyptian, or Indian medical traditions and practices to Islamic medicine.

If these deficiencies are borne in mind, however, *Islamic Medicine* can still provide a solid, though somewhat out-of-date (the book was first published in 1978), introduction to the academic and scientific tradition in Islamic medical writing.