Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 1 (of 2)Wootton, A. C.
History
Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Wootton, A. C.
Pharmacy -- History
Arabic medicine was based on the works of Hippocrates and Galen,
which were for the most part translated first into Syriac, and then
into Arabic. It does not come within the scope of this work to narrate
or estimate the advance in medicine which may be accredited to the
Arabian writers and practitioners. Medical historians do not allow that
they contributed much original service to either anatomy, physiology,
pathology, or surgery; but it is admitted by every student that their
maintenance of scholarship through the half dozen centuries during
which Europe was sunk in the most abject ignorance and superstition
entitles them to the gratitude of all who have lived since. The
medicine of Avicenna was perhaps much the same as that of Galen. Both
were accepted by the physicians of England, France, and Germany with
the slavish deference which the long burial of the critical faculties
had made inevitable, and which needed the vigorous abuse of Paracelsus
to quicken into activity.
Whatever may have been the case with medicine it cannot be denied that
the Arabs contributed largely to the development of its ministering
arts, chemistry and pharmacy. The achievements attributed to Geber in
the eighth century were probably not due to any single adept. Tradition
assigned the glory to him and, likely enough, if such a chemist really
lived and acquired fame, other investigators who followed him for a
century or two adopted the pious fraud so frequently met with in other
branches of study in the early centuries of our era of attributing
theories or discoveries to some venerated teacher in order to assure
for them immediate acceptance. However this may be, it is not the less
established that the chemistry of Geber, or of Geber and others, was in
fact the fruit of Arab industry and genius.
Our language indicates to some extent what Pharmacy owes to the
Arabs. Alcohol, julep, syrup, sugar, alkermes, are Arabic names;
the general employment in medicine of rhubarb, senna, camphor,
manna, musk, nutmegs, cloves, bezoar stones, cassia, tamarinds,
reached us through them. They first distilled rose water. They first
established pharmacies, and from the time of Haroun Al-Raschid there
is evidence that the Government controlled the quality and prices of
the medicine sold in them. Sabor-Ebn-Sahel, president of the school
of Dschondisabour, was the author of the earliest pharmacopœia, which
was entitled “Krabadin”; and Hassan-Ali-Ebno-Talmid of Bagdad in the
tenth century, and Avicenna (Al-Hussein-Ben-Abdallah-Ebn-Sina) in the
eleventh century prepared collections of formulas which were used as
pharmacopœias.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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