It seems to me that nearly everyone who comes to BYU is either trying for pre-med or nursing (myself included). Naturally, this spurned my interest into doing a post on Medicine in light of the Islamic culture.
Typically, when we look at ancient medicine, we take that to mean primitive and uncivilized. We probably visualize dancing rain men, exotic healers who tried to work magic to heal the injured and mentally insane. I’m here to put that false assumption to rest! My Islam professor had actually mentioned in passing that the Ottomans had perhaps the most sophisticated medical practices in the entire ancient world…even more so than Europe (gasp)!
In my research, I was pleasantly surprised about how medical knowledge was tra
nsmitted in the 9th-13th century Ottoman Empire. It wasn’t through oral mediums, which really surprised me since I was under the impression from my experience in our last unit that the Islamic culture was mostly oral. The most prevalent way Medical knowledge was spread was through written treatises and handbooks. Unlike Europe, the Middle East actually had a plentiful supply of paper. However, the printing press never arrived into the Middle East until the late 19th century. This meant that for the longest time, all these complex medical treatises to be written in calligraphy. Now, don’t see this as a hindrance. The Muslims were still very effective in studying medicine.
nsmitted in the 9th-13th century Ottoman Empire. It wasn’t through oral mediums, which really surprised me since I was under the impression from my experience in our last unit that the Islamic culture was mostly oral. The most prevalent way Medical knowledge was spread was through written treatises and handbooks. Unlike Europe, the Middle East actually had a plentiful supply of paper. However, the printing press never arrived into the Middle East until the late 19th century. This meant that for the longest time, all these complex medical treatises to be written in calligraphy. Now, don’t see this as a hindrance. The Muslims were still very effective in studying medicine. Again, since I’m talking about Islam, guess which text I’m going to refer to first? The Bible…no just kidding I mean the Quran. From the Quran (and also the Hadith), Muslims held a strong belief that there was no disease that Allah had not provided a cure for. Consequently, this assumption would provide for the extensive medical research 9th century in the Middle East while Europe wallowed in the Dark Ages. Again, we see how religion has a profound effect on motivating people to search for knowledge, including medical cures.
Now, I’d like to mention some notable Muslim physicians. There’s Al Razi, the father of Islamic medicine, who pioneered hospital expansion and was the first to truly understand the personal relationship between the doctor and the patient—one that is based on mutual trust and two-way responsibility in the healing process. He produced (without a printing press) over 200 books which would later serve as the backbone of European medicine. Quite a feat.
Remember those drug tests you had to do while getting a job? You can thank Ibn Sina for having to pee in a cup as he was the first to theorize that many medical diagnoses could be found in urine.
Ibn-Al Nafis was the first to understand that the heart had two ventricles. He truly revolutionized the circulation and respiratory systems of the body. But here’s the rub—his works never got translated into Latin! Therefore, his ideas couldn’t be utilized widely. The whole world missed out on his revolutionary insights—all because of a failure to spread written knowledge. I find that fascinating.
There was actually a large influx of texts on ophthalmology in the Middle East during the 12th and 13th centuries. There were precise procedures on treating complex eye diseases such as treating cataracts. The Result of Thinking About The Cure of Eye Diseases written by Fath al-Din al-Qaysi actually became largely used in Europe after it was translated.
Any ways, I could go on and on, but what I want you to get out of this post most is that if it weren’t for written knowledge, the breakthroughs in medicine could not have taken place. Marc Wien’s post on medical terminology also addressed this point. The difference between sophisticated medicine and unsophisticated is whether or not there is a written language. A large part of medicine comes from the complex words that describe and categorize medical ideas. Thank you Islam for choosing to write!
Sources:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/islamic_medical/islamic_04.html
Shuttleworth, Martyn (2010). Islamic Medicine - History of Medicine. Retrieved [Date of Retrieval] from Experiment Resources: http://www.experiment-resources.com/islamic-medicine.html
Marc's Post
Thanks for this post, Andrew; it was really informative! It's a bit scary to think of all the advances in medicine, science, one language group might have made that just wasn't communicated to people speaking other languages, like Ibn-al Nafis' understanding of the two ventricles of the heart. It makes me wonder if we've really shared all the knowledge we can with other parts of the world, if we've tried to really group all our findings together.
ReplyDeleteWith the various forms of instant communication and translation we have today, it's hard to imagine medical practices not being spread simply because they weren't translated. I wonder how technologically advanced we would be as a global society if people thousands of years ago would have been able to rapidly share innovations and inventions the way we can now
ReplyDeleteYep, it all ties in to the university idea that Dane posted on Monday. The coming together of scholars and teachers in one setting in order to share knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThat's probably why BYU advertises study abroad programs so much. The whole point of traveling is to expose yourself to a whole array of ideas. The more ideas you become exposed to, the more chances you have of developing a single idea into something greater... innovation!