Alkindus--this being the Latin arrangement of his Arabic name--came from a Persian family, who lived first in Basara and later at the court of the caliphs El-Monon and El-Motasin, in Bagdad. He enjoyed a very high reputation as physician, philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, and died A.D. 873. Mesue, the first of his name, sometimes known as Janus Damascenus, was director of the hospital in Bagdad and physician to Haroun-al-Raschid. He was born in 777, wrote extensively (since at least forty of his works have been catalogued), and died in 857 in Samarra. Serapion the elder, also sometimes known as Janus Damascenus, and whose Arabic name was Serafiun, was born in Damascus--the exact data is not known--and died some time prior to A.D. 930. He was author of two volumes of aphorisms concerning the practice of medicine, which had at his time the greatest repute. The most celebrated of the early Arabian physicians was Rhazes, born in the Persian province of Khorassan A.D. 850. According to the historians of his nation he was a universal genius, equally famous in music, astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, and medicine; he was surnamed "The Experienced." At the age of fifty he was one of the most distinguished professors in the Academy of Bagdad, where students came from great distances to listen to him. Chosen from among a hundred colleagues to direct the grand hospital of that city, he displayed indefatigable zeal and most scholarly learning, even to his old age and in spite of loss of sight, which overtook him at the age of eighty, when his reputation was at its height. Two years after this misfortune--i.e., in 932--he died. His generosity, which was proverbial, and his compassion for the poor left him penniless at the time of his death. Some two hundred and thirty-seven monographs of his have been{061} catalogued, though the greater number of his works are practically lost. Two treatises on medicine remain which afford excellent counsel in many respects; among other matters he advises:-- "Study carefully the antecedents of the man to whose care you propose to confide all you have most dear in this world,--that is, your life and the lives of your wife and children. If the man is dissipated, is given to frivolous pleasures, cultivates with too much zeal the arts foreign to his profession, still more if he be addicted to wine and debauchery, refrain from committing into such hands lives so precious." His greatest publication was _Continens_--extracts compiled from all authors for his own use--divided into thirty-seven books, constituting an abridgment of the science of medicine and surgery up to his time; and, notwithstanding its imperfect state, this work was held in greatest reverence, and was a common source of knowledge among Orientals long after his day.