Drawings and Pharmacy in Al-Zahrawi's 10th-Century Surgical TreatiseHamarneh, Sami Khalaf
History
Drawings and Pharmacy in Al-Zahrawi's 10th-Century Surgical Treatise
Hamarneh, Sami Khalaf
Pharmacy -- Early works to 1800
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Drawings and Pharmacy in al-Zahrāwī’s
10th-Century Surgical Treatise
_by Sami Hamarneh_
Paper 22, pages 81-94, from
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM
OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY
UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM
BULLETIN 228
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION · WASHINGTON, D.C., 1961
[Illustration: Figure 1.--Reproduction of a page from
original Arabic manuscript indexed as "Cod. N.F. 476A" at
Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna. Courtesy
Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek.]
Drawings and Pharmacy in al-Zahrāwī’s
10th-Century Surgical Treatise
_by Sami Hamarneh_
_Probably the earliest independent work in Arabic Spain to embrace the
whole of medical knowledge of the time is the encyclopedic al-Tasrīf,
written in the late 10th century by Abū al-Qāsim al-Zahrāwī, also known
as Abulcasis. Consisting of 30 treatises, it is the only known work of
al-Zahrāwī and it brought him high prestige in the western world._
_Here we are concerned only with his last treatise, on surgery. With its
many drawings of surgical instruments, intended for the instruction of
apprentices, its descriptions of formulas and medicinal preparations,
and its lucid observations on surgical procedures, this treatise is
perhaps the oldest of its kind._
_Scholars today have available a translation of the text and
reproductions of the drawings, but many of the latter are greatly
modified from the originals._
_This study reproduces examples of al-Zahrāwī’s original illustrations,
compares some with early drawings based on them, and comments on
passages in the treatise of interest to students of pharmacy and medical
therapy._
THE AUTHOR: _Sami Hamarneh undertook this research into the history of
medicine in connection with his duties as associate curator of medical
sciences in the United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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