nstance, is described in Abulcasis quite as if
he had had definite experience with it. When this occurs in a woman, the
reposition of the bone is often greatly facilitated by a cotton tampon
in the vagina. This tampon must be removed at every urination. There is
another way, however, of better securing the same purpose of
counterpressure. One may take a sheep's bladder into the orifice of
which a tube is fastened. One should introduce the bladder into the
vagina, and then blow strongly through the tube, until the bladder
becomes swollen and fills up the vaginal cavity. The fracture will, as a
rule, then be readily reduced. Here is, of course, not alone the first
hint of the colpeurynter, but a very practical form of the apparatus
complete. Old-time physicians used the bladders of animals very
generally for nearly all the medical purposes for which we now use
rubber bags.

AVICENNA

Undoubtedly the most important of Abulcasis' contemporaries is the
famous physician whose Arabic name, Ibn Sina, was transformed into
Avicenna. He was born toward the end of the tenth century in the Persian
province of Chorasan, at the height of Arabian influence, and is
sometimes spoken of as the chief representative of Arabian medicine, of
as much importance for it as Galen for later Greek medicine. His
principal book is the so-called "Canon." It replaced the compendium
"Continens" of Rhazes, and, in the East, continued until the end of the
fifteenth century to be looked upon as the most complete and best system
of medicine. Avicenna came to be better known in the West than any of
the other Arabian writers, and his name carried great weight with it.
There are very few subjects in medicine that did not receive suggestive,
if not always adequate, treatment at the hands of this great Arabian
medical thinker of the eleventh century. He copied freely from his
predecessors, but completed their work with his own observations and
conclusions. One of his chapters is devoted to leprosy alone. He has
definite information with regard to bubonic plague and the _filaria
medinensis_. Here and there one finds striking anticipations of what are
supposed to be modern observations. Nothing was too small for his
notice. One portion of the fourth book is on cosmetics, in which he
treats the affections of the hair and of the nails. He has special
chapters with regard to obesity, emaciation, and general constitutional
conditions. His book, the "Antidotarium,"