HYSICIANS

After Rhazes, the most important contributors to medical literature from
among the Arabs, with the single exception of Avicenna, were born in
Spain. They are Albucasis or Abulcasis, the surgeon; Avenzoar, the
physician, and Averroes, the philosophic theorist in medicine. Besides,
it may be recalled here that Maimonides, the great Jewish physician, was
born and educated at Cordova, in Spain. It might very well be a surprise
that these distinguished men among the Arabs should have flourished in
Spain, so far from the original seat of Arabian and Mohammedan dominion
in the East, where, owing to conditions in the modern time, the
English-speaking world particularly is not likely to assume that the
environment was favorable for the development of science and
philosophy. Anyone who recalls, however, the history of Spanish
intellectual influence in the Roman Empire, as we have traced it at the
beginning of this chapter, will appreciate how favorable conditions were
in Spain for the fostering of intellectual development. With the
disturbances that had come from political strife and the invasion of the
barbarians in Italy, Spain had undoubtedly come to hold the primacy in
the intellectual life of Europe at the time when the Arabs took
possession of the peninsula.

ABULCASIS

The most important of the Arabian surgeons of the Middle Ages is
Albucasis or Abulcasis, also Abulkasim, who was born near Cordova, in
Spain. The exact year of his birth is not known, but he flourished in
the second half of the tenth century. He is said to have lived to the
age of 101. The name of his principal work, which embraces the whole of
medicine, is "Altasrif," or "Tesrif," which has been translated "The
Miscellany." Most of what he has to say about medical matters is taken
from Rhazes. His work on surgery, however, in three books, represents
his special contribution to the medical sciences. It contains a number
of illustrations of instruments, and is the first illustrated medical
book that has come to us. It was translated into Latin, and was studied
very faithfully by all the surgeons of the Middle Ages. Guy de Chauliac
has quoted Albucasis about two hundred times in his "Chirurgia Magna."
Even as late as the beginning of the sixteenth century Fabricius de
Acquapendente, the teacher of Harvey, confessed that he owed most to
three great medical writers, Celsus (first century), Paul of AEgina
(seventh century), and Abulcasis (tenth ce