C2 - Medical Progress Flashcards
Why was Baghdad important in Islamic medical knowledge?
In the years 786-809, the Caliph Harun al-Rashid ruled the Islamic Empire. Baghdad became a centre for the translation of Greek manuscripts into Arabic.
What did al-Rashid do in 805?
He set up a major new hospital in Baghdad with a medical school and library.
What happened during the reign of Caliph al-Mamum (813-33)?
- al-Rashid’s library was developed into the ‘House of Wisdom’ (the world’s largest library and a study centre for scholars)
- preserved hundreds of Ancient Greek medical books by Hippocrates and Galen, which were lost to Western Europe during the early Middle Ages.
Why did the Islamic religion encourage medical learning?
The Prophet Muhammad said ‘For every disease, Allah has given a cure’. So doctors were inspired to find them.
What were some Islamic ideas about medicine?
- Muslim scientists were encouraged to discover cures and new drugs, such as senna and naphtha
- in the Islamic empire, people with mental illnesses were treated with compassion
- Islamic medicine valued Hippocratic and Galenic medicine, and it preserved and learned from the books of the ancient world
What were bimaristans?
Muslim hospitals which were meant for treating patients, not simply caring for them as was the case in the Christian world.
How did Islamic medical knowledge spread?
Islamic medical discoveries, and the old medical knowledge of the ancient Greeks, arrived in Italy around 1065 through the Latin translations of a merchant, Constantine the African. The universities in Padua and Bologna in Italy soon became the best places to study medicine in medieval Europe. These medical ideas reached England through trade, as merchants brought new equipment, drugs and books.
Who was Rhazes (c865 - c925)?
- he distinguished measles from smallpox for the first time
- he write over 150 books
- he followed Galen, but was critical; one of his books was called Doubts about Galen
Who was Avicenna (980-1037)?
- wrote an encyclopaedia of Ancient Greek and Islamic medicine known as the Canon of Medicine
- this listed the properties of 760 different drugs (such as camphor and laudanum), and discussed anorexia and obesity
- it became the standard European medical textbook used to teach doctors in the West until the seventeenth century
Who was Ibn al-Nafis?
- in the thirteenth century, he concluded that Galen was wrong about how the heart worked, claiming that blood circulated via the lungs
- but Islam did not allow dissection and his books were not read in the West
- Europeans continued to accept Galen’s mistake until the seventeenth century
What were some common medieval surgical procedures?
Bloodletting - commonly to balance the humours
Amputation - cutting off a painful or damaged part of the body
Trepanning - drilling a hole into the skull to ‘let the demons out’ e.g. for epilepsy
Cauterisation - burning a wound to stop the flow of blood using heated iron
How was pain in surgery dealt with in medieval times?
Patients often had to be held or tied down during operations. Natural anaesthetics like mandrake root, opium and hemlock were used, but too much might kill the patient.
Who was Abulcasis?
- a Muslim surgeon, write a 30-volume medical book, Al Tasrif, in 1000
- invented 26 new surgical instruments and many new procedures (e.g. ligatures)
- made cauterisation popular
What did Hugh of Lucca and his son Theodoric do?
- in 1267, criticised the common view that pus was needed for a wound to heal
- used wine on wounds to reduce the chances of infection and had new methods of removing arrows
- their ideas to prevent infection clashed with Hippocratic advice and did not become popular
What did Mondino de Luzzi do?
- led the new interest in anatomy in the fourteenth century
- in 1316, he wrote the book Anathomia, which became the standard dissection manual for over 200 years
- in 1315, he supervised a public dissection permitted in Bologna but when the body did not fit Galen’s descriptions, the body was thought to be wrong.
