The genre of the medical encyclopedia,
a text that covered all illnesses that could afflict a person
from head to toe, flourished in the Islamic world.
The Persian physician, Al-Razi composed one known
compose a medical encyclopedia known Kitab al-Hawi fi al-Tibb
a comprehensive book of medicine, as did another scholar, ʻAlī
Ibn Al-ʻAbbās Al-Magūsī who wrote a complete book
of the Medical art Kitāb Kāmil aṣ-Ṣināʿa aṭ-Ṭibbiyya.
These encyclopedias were well known in the medieval Islamic world,
but the encyclopedia that gained perhaps the most fame
and was most widely utilized in the medieval West was on by Abū
'Alī al-Husayn ibn 'Abd Allāh ibn Sĩnã, who died in 1037.
His Qān'ūn fī al-Ṭibb the canon of medicine,
which was translated into Latin as a Liber canonis.
So who was Ibn Sina
and why was this text so popular?
Ibn Sina,
or as he became known in the Latin West.
Avicenna, Avicenna was a polymath who wrote Compendia and treatises
across a range of subjects, including philosophy or Islamic falsafa,
as well as Islamic philosophical theology known as Kalam as well
in addition to his work on medicine.
We have over 150 works attributed
to him, including works on natural philosophy,
on allegory such as Hayy ibn Yaqzan, thought experiments
such as his thought experiment on the flying man, as well as poetry.
In particular, he composed two large scale compendia,
a medical encyclopedia, the canon of medicine,
and a work in natural philosophy, the Kitāb al-Shifā',
both of which were translated into Latin.
The Kitāb al-Shifā'
was translated into Latin with the title
Suficientia by Dominicus Gundissalinus working in Toledo.
The canon of
Medicine, which Avicenna completed in 1025 in Rayy,
a place south of modern day Tehran, was available in Toledo
100 years later.
It was translated into Latin by the other prolific
translator working in the town, Gerard of Cremona,
who is thought to have completed the work before 1187.
The canon of medicine gained particular fame
because of its accessibility as a medical handbook,
especially useful to both students and practitioners of medicine.
In the canon, Avicenna aims to systematize
the theories of medicine set out by the classical authority,
Galen, with that of the natural philosophy of Aristotle.
So he aims to synthesize both medicine and natural philosophy.
In doing this, he wanted to stretch out both
a systematized and categorical account
of both the theory and the practice of medicine.
How does he do this?
Avicenna did this by dividing his material into five books, each subdivided
into chapters known in Arabic as faṣls, or fann and in Latin as fen
What we see on the screen are two images from two manuscript
copies of the Qān'ūn fī al-Ṭibb, the Canon of Medicine.
On the right we see and an image from a 17th century
Persian manuscript made in Isfahan, which is an opening page of book
three, which depicts diseases on, which a book
that is about diseases on the brain.
We can see
that there's a little bit of language marked out in red ink,
which marks out the division from one section to the next.
The other image on the screen is one
from a Latin commentary on the canon of medicine.
Here we can see the clear division
and categorization of all medical matters.
And it's clearly seen in the layout of this manuscript, of this
Latin manuscript.
What we see
here is the
opening page from a 14th century copy of a commentary on the canon
by the Italian physician, Gentile of Foligno.
Here you can see the division marker fen in red.
if you look closely enough
and the layout of the page across clear columns with categories
that demonstrates how the text was not only read, but
in the case of Foligno here also studied and commented upon.
Now there are a large number of manuscript copies of the text
that attest to its popularity, and these manuscripts
are only just beginning to be studied as a whole
corpus.
We have lots of copies because it became a core textbook
on university curricula.
For instance, by 1309, if you were a student
at the University of Montpellier
in order to incept as a doctor, you had to show that you were well
equipped and had read and read and I quote the books of Avicenna
or fading him Razi's,
so a reference to al-Rāzī'
In particular, students had to show
in particular across a range of universities
Students had to show that they had mastered
book one, part one on physiology book four, part one on fevers; and Book
five on diseases from head to toe.
It was a text that also continues to be popular
in the early modern period.
It was a text that was printed frequently.
We have around 60 complete or partial editions that exist.
These editions were printed between 1500-1674,
demonstrating its popularity and its continued use.
And the canon of medicine remained a core textbook
in Western University curriculum well into the 18th century.