Islamic medicine in the context of "Medicine in ancient Rome"

The history of biology traces the study of the living world from ancient to modern times. Although the concept of biology as a single coherent field arose in the 19th century, the biological sciences emerged from traditions of medicine and natural history reaching back to Ayurveda, ancient Egyptian medicine and the works of Aristotle, Theophrastus and Galen in the ancient Greco-Roman world. This ancient work was further developed in the Middle Ages by Muslim physicians and scholars such as Avicenna. During the European Renaissance and early modern period, biological thought was revolutionized in Europe by a renewed interest in empiricism and the discovery of many novel organisms. Prominent in this movement were Vesalius and Harvey, who used experimentation and careful observation in physiology, and naturalists such as Linnaeus and Buffon who began to classify the diversity of life and the fossil record, as well as the development and behavior of organisms. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek revealed by means of microscopy the previously unknown world of microorganisms, laying the groundwork for cell theory. The growing importance of natural theology, partly a response to the rise of mechanical philosophy, encouraged the growth of natural history (although it entrenched the argument from design).

Over the 18th and 19th centuries, biological sciences such as botany and zoology became increasingly professional scientific disciplines. Lavoisier and other physical scientists began to connect the animate and inanimate worlds through physics and chemistry. Explorer-naturalists such as Alexander von Humboldt investigated the interaction between organisms and their environment, and the ways this relationship depends on geography—laying the foundations for biogeography, ecology and ethology. Naturalists began to reject essentialism and consider the importance of extinction and the mutability of species. Cell theory provided a new perspective on the fundamental basis of life. These developments, as well as the results from embryology and paleontology, were synthesized in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. The end of the 19th century saw the fall of spontaneous generation and the rise of the germ theory of disease, though the mechanism of inheritance remained a mystery.

Abū Marwān ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Zuhr (Arabic: أبو مروان عبد الملك بن زهر), traditionally known by his Latinized name Avenzoar (/ˌɑːvənˈzoʊər/; 1094–1162), was an Arab physician, surgeon, and poet. He was born at Seville in medieval Andalusia (present-day Spain), was a contemporary of Averroes and Ibn Tufail, and was the most well-regarded physician of his era. He was particularly known for his emphasis on a more rational, empiric basis of medicine. His major work, Al-Taysīr fil-Mudāwāt wal-Tadbīr ("Book of Simplification Concerning Therapeutics and Diet"), was translated into Latin and Hebrew and was influential to the progress of surgery. He also improved surgical and medical knowledge by keying out several diseases and their treatments.

Ibn Zuhr performed the first experimental tracheotomy on a goat. He is thought to have made the earliest description of bezoar stones as medicinal items.

During the High Middle Ages, the Islamic world was an important contributor to the global cultural scene, innovating and supplying information and ideas to Europe, via Al-Andalus, Sicily and the Crusader kingdoms in the Levant. These included Latin translations of the Greek Classics and of Arabic texts in astronomy, mathematics, science, and medicine. Translation of Arabic philosophical texts into Latin "led to the transformation of almost all philosophical disciplines in the medieval Latin world", with a particularly strong influence of Muslim philosophers being felt in natural philosophy, psychology and metaphysics. Other contributions included technological and scientific innovations via the Silk Road, including Chinese inventions such as paper, compass and gunpowder.

The Islamic world also influenced other aspects of medieval European culture, partly by innovations made during the Islamic Golden Age, including various fields such as the arts, agriculture, alchemy, music, pottery, etc.

The earliest known traces of wine were found near Tbilisi, Georgia (c. 6000 BCE). The earliest known winery, from c. 4100 BCE, is the Areni-1 winery in Armenia. The subsequent spread of wine culture around the Mediterranean was probably due to the influence of the Phoenicians (from c. 1000 BCE) and Greeks (from c. 600 BCE). The Phoenicians exported the wines of Byblos, which were known for their quality into Roman times. Industrialized production of wine in ancient Greece spread across the Italian peninsula and to southern Gaul. The ancient Romans further increased the scale of wine production and trade networks, especially in Gaul around the time of the Gallic Wars. The Romans discovered that burning sulfur candles inside empty wine vessels kept them fresh and free from a vinegar smell, due to the antioxidant effects of sulfur dioxide, which is still used as a wine preservative.

The altered consciousness produced by wine has been considered religious since its origin. The ancient Greeks worshiped Dionysus or Bacchus and the Ancient Romans carried on his cult. Consumption of ritual wine, probably a certain type of sweet wine originally, was part of Jewish practice since Biblical times and, as part of the eucharist commemorating Jesus's Last Supper, became even more essential to the Christian Church. Although Islam nominally forbade the production or consumption of wine, during its Golden Age, alchemists such as Geber pioneered wine's distillation for medicinal and industrial purposes such as the production of perfume.

Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī (1201 – 1274), also known as Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (Arabic: نصیر الدین الطوسی; Persian: نصیر الدین طوسی) or simply as (al-)Tusi, was a Persian polymath, architect, philosopher, physician, scientist, and theologian. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was a well published author, writing on subjects of math, engineering, prose, and mysticism. Additionally, al-Tusi made several scientific advancements. In astronomy, al-Tusi created very accurate tables of planetary motion, an updated planetary model, and critiques of Ptolemaic astronomy. He also made strides in logic, mathematics but especially trigonometry, biology, and chemistry. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi left behind a great legacy as well. Tusi is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientists of medieval Islam, since he is often considered the creator of trigonometry as a mathematical discipline in its own right. The Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) considered Tusi to be the greatest of the later Persian scholars. There is also reason to believe that he may have influenced Copernican heliocentrism.

Ophthalmology was one of the foremost branches in medieval Islamic medicine. The oculist or kahhal (کحال), a somewhat despised professional in Galen's time, was an honored member of the medical profession by the Abbasid period, occupying a unique place in royal households. Medieval Islamic scientists (unlike their classical predecessors) considered it normal to combine theory and practice, including the crafting of precise instruments, and therefore found it natural to combine the study of the eye with the practical application of that knowledge. The specialized instruments used in their operations ran into scores. Innovations such as the "injection syringe", a hollow needle, invented by Ammar ibn Ali of Mosul, which was used for the extraction by suction of soft cataracts, were quite common.

Muslim physicians described such conditions as pannus, glaucoma (described as "headache of the pupil"), phlyctenulae, and operations on the conjunctiva. They were the first to use the words "retina" and "cataract".

Abu Zayd Ahmed ibn Sahl Balkhi (Persian: ابو زید احمد بن سهل بلخی) was a Persian Muslim polymath: a geographer, mathematician, physician, psychologist and scientist. Born in 850 CE in Shamistiyan, in the province of Balkh, Greater Khorasan, he was a disciple of al-Kindi. He also founded the "Balkhī school" of terrestrial mapping in Baghdad. Al-Balkhi is believed to have been one of the earliest to diagnose that mental illness can have psychological and physiological causes and he was the first to typify four types of emotional disorders: fear and anxiety; anger and aggression; sadness and depression; and obsessions.

Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr ibn Yazīd al-Ṭabarī (Arabic: أَبُو جَعْفَر مُحَمَّد بْن جَرِير بْن يَزِيد ٱلطَّبَرِيّ; 839–923 CE / 224–310 AH), commonly known as al-Ṭabarī (Arabic: ٱلطَّبَرِيّ), was a Sunni Muslim scholar, polymath, historian, exegete, jurist, and theologian from Amol, Tabaristan, present-day Iran. Among the most prominent figures of the Islamic Golden Age, al-Tabari is widely known for his historical works and expertise in Quranic exegesis, and has been described as "an impressively prolific polymath". He authored works on a diverse range of subjects, including world history, poetry, lexicography, grammar, ethics, mathematics, and medicine. Among his most famous and influential works are his Quranic commentary, Tafsir al-Tabari, and historical chronicle, Tarikh al-Tabari.

Al-Tabari followed the Shafi'i school for nearly a decade before he developed his own interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence. His understanding of it was both sophisticated and remarkably fluid, and, as such, he continued to develop his ideas and thoughts on juristic matters right until the end of his life.

The Schola Medica Salernitana (Italian: Scuola Medica Salernitana) was a medieval medical school, the first and most important of its kind. Situated on the Tyrrhenian Sea in the south Italian city of Salerno, it was founded in the 9th century and rose to prominence in the 10th century, becoming the most important source of medical knowledge in Western Europe at the time.

Arabic medical treatises, both those that were translations of Greek texts and those that were originally written in Arabic, had accumulated in the library of Montecassino, where they were translated into Latin; thus the received lore of Hippocrates, Galen and Dioscorides was supplemented and invigorated by Arabic medical practice, known from contacts with Sicily and North Africa. As a result, the medical practitioners of Salerno, both men and women, were unrivaled in the medieval Western Mediterranean for practical concerns.