Medicine Dietetics and Pharmacology - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 237

as doubtful and some apocryphal works,
in his bibliography of 1950. Mahdavi, in
1954, lists 131 authentic, and 110 doubt-
ful works. Ibn Sīnā was known primarily
as a philosopher and a physician, but he
contributed also to the advancement of all
the sciences that were accessible in his day:
natural history, physics, chemistry, astron-
omy, mathematics, music. Economics and
politics benefited from his experience as a
statesman. Moral and religious questions
(not necessarily pertaining to mysticism),
urānic exegesis, statements on ūfī
doctrine and behaviour produced minor
writings. He wrote poetry for instructional
purposes, for he versified epitomes of logic
and medicine, but he had also the abilities
of a true poet, clothing his philosophical
doctrine in images, both in verse (as in his
poem on the soul) and in prose, in sym-
bolic narratives whose meaning has given
rise to controversy.
Medicine is the subject of separate
works; but natural history and mathemat-
ics are thought of as parts of philoso-
phy. Thus, his principal treatise on these
sciences is included in the great Kitāb
al- · ifā , “Book of Healing [of the Soul]”,
in the same way as that on Metaphysics,
while the famous ānūn fi 'l-ibb , “Canon
of Medicine”, is a separate work.
The ānūn appears to have formed a
more consciously coherent whole than
the philosophical works. Because it con-
stituted a monumental unity, which main-
tained its authority until modern times
when experimental science began, and
because it still remained more accessible
than Hippocrates and Galen, it served
as a basis for seven centuries of medical
teaching and practice.
The ānūn is the clear and ordered
“Summa” of all the medical knowledge of
Ibn Sīnā's time, augmented from his own
observations. It is divided into five topics.
The first contains generalities concern-

ing the human body, sickness, health and
general treatment and therapeutics. The
second contains the Materia Medica and
the Pharmacology of herbs. This passage
sets out the three methods—agreement,
difference and concomitant variations—
that are usually regarded as characteristic
of modern science. The third book deals
with special pathology, studied by organs,
or rather by systems. The fourth book
opens with the famous treatise on fevers;
then follow the treatise on signs, symp-
toms, diagnostics and prognostics, minor
surgery, tumors, wounds, fractures and
bites, and that on poisons. The fifth book
contains the pharmacopoeia.
Several treatises take up in isolation a
number of the data in the ānūn and deal
with particular points. Some are very well-
known: their smaller size assured them
of a wide circulation. Among the most
widely diffused are treatises on the pulse,
the medical pharmacopoeia, advice for
the conservation of health and the study
of diarrhoea; in addition, monographs on
various remedies, chicory, oxymel, bal-
sam, bleeding. The virtues of wine are
not neglected.
Physicians were offered a mnemonic in
the form of a poem which established the
essentials of Avicenna's theory and prac-
tice: principles, observations, advice on
therapeutics and dietetics, simple surgi-
cal techniques. This is the famous Ur ¡ ūza
fi 'l-ibb , which was translated into Latin
several times from the 13th to the 17th
century, under the title Cantica Avicennae .

(A.-M. Guichon)