From the clarification of the origin and historical development of two of the most impressive health campigns of the first third of the twentieth century, those against tuberculosis and to prevent infant mortality, an evaluation is sought from a long range view. Their contribution to the modern figuration of health as well as to the genesis of several regular traits of today's community and family medicine are pointed out.
This article reports a study of Treatise XIX from Abū-L-Qāsim al-Zahrāwī's Kitāb al-tarsīf, according to the Arabic manuscript no. 5772 in the Paris National Library. A translation is provided. Folios 89v and 90r, which include chapter 8 of part II of the treatise, are reproduced from the manuscript.
This article reports a preliminary study of Abu-l-Ala: his life, his works and his significance as a writer, scientist and physician. All existing Arab manuscripts on the Kitāb muŷarrabāt al-jawāss are cited, and Arabic manuscript no. 520 from the Bodleian Library in Oxford is described. Finally, the translation is given, and folios 41v., 42r., 52v., 53r., 81v., 82v., 93r., 94v., 97v., 100r. and 100v. reproduced, from the Bodleian Library manuscript of the Kitāb muŷarrabāt al-jawāss. This material includes the peculiarities and therapeutic features of plants and animals such as elecampane, love-in-a-mist, ivy, the goat, the ostrich, the hoopoe and laudanum. The text reproduced here, as well as the work in general, contains large doses of quackery.
The Kitāb al-taysīr fī l-mudāwāt wa-l-tadbīr (The Method of Preparing Medicines and Diet) was written in Arabic by Avenzoar (1095-1162). It has yet to be translated into any Western modern language, and we wish to take on this task. We begin by offering an annotated Spanish translation (with commentary) of its preliminary "Chapter on the preservation of health". The Al-mohad caliph 'Abd al-Mu'min, for whom Avenzoar served as court physician, requested the book for his personal use. The work begins with this chapter, which contains measures for preventing and curing certain diseases. This section is followed by the main body of the book. It consists of a complete list of diseases working from head to toe and including their description, symptoms and treatment. The translated chapter is an atypical and concise treatise on the subject. It is presented in a quasi-aphoristic style that appears to have been used by Avenzoar to rapidly deal with the prevention area, in order to concentrate his efforts on what is surely one of the finest and most extensive mediaeval nosographies. We make this claim because our author does not exclusively use for this purpose the so-called "non-naturals"--the usual focus of health preservation measures of the time. Rather, he makes wide use of simple medicines with preventative ends--an unusual practice. Moreover, he indiscriminately intersperses prevention elements with others that are intended to cure. In order to better understand the meaning of this text, we previously refer to the foundations of health preservation practices in the mediaeval world, to the reasons why Avenzoar wrote the Kitāb al-taysīr fī l-mudāwāt wa-l-tadbīr, and to the characteristics of its translated chapter. We also examine the medical sources and contents of this chapter.
Avenzoar has been credited as the author of the first description of inflammation of the pericardium in medical historical literature. Our study shows that although Avenzoar authored a study of diseases of the pericardium with emphasis on pathologies, his epistemological framework was similar to that used by Galen and Avicenna, authors who constituted the source of knowledge for Islamic medicine. We show that the approach used by Avenzoar appears to derive from the absence of anatomical and physiological information, and from a detailed description of the indications and treatments, which distinguish his work from earlier writings.
Most of the information about medical science in al-Andalus is associated with its leading figures and their work in the capital cities of the time: Cordoba, Seville, Granada, and the Taifal cities. This study presents the medicine of the Levantine or Sarqī al-Andalus region (10th-14th centuries). To this end, we have gathered reports on physicians that worked in the different Levantine capitals and have investigated key data in the biographical dictionaries, sources that have been little-used to study medical practice. We especially studied the Takmila by Ibn al-Abbār from Valencia.
The article describes the authors and works which were quoted by the Franciscan Juan Gil de Zamora in his Historia naturalis, a scientific encyclopaedia written between c. 1275 and before 1296, probably in the Franciscan monastery of Zamora (Kingdom of Castille). Juan Gil made wide use of the Avicenna's Canon, Gilbertus de Aquila (Anglicus)'s Compendium medicine, and Salernitan medical literature. His work contributed to the diffusion of these medical authors and works throughout the Christian intellectual milieu of late medieval Castille. This diffusion was not without problems.
This paper discusses where Portuguese physicians studied medicine. The careers of two thirteenth-century physicians, Petrus Hispanus and Giles of Santarem, indicate that the Portuguese travelled abroad to study in Montpellier or Paris. But it is also possible that there were opportunities for study in Portugal itself. Particularly significant in this respect is the tradition of medical teaching associated with the Augustinian house of Santa Cruz in Coimbra and the reference to medical texts found in Coimbra archives. From these sources it can be shown that there was a suitable environment for medical study in medieval Portugal, encouraging able students to further their medical interests elsewhere.
