How Islam changed medicine: Ibn Sina (Avicenna) saw medicine and surgery as one

doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7533.120-b

BMJ 2006;332:120 (14 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7533.120-b

Letter

How Islam changed medicine

Ibn Sina (Avicenna) saw medicine and surgery as one

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Editor—In the second Al Hammadi lecture at the St Andrew'sDay symposium on therapeutics at the Royal College of Physiciansof Edinburgh in 2002, I contrasted Ibn Sina's Canon of Medicine,written about 1012, with Osler's Principles and Practice ofMedicine (1892).^1-3

Both books have about the same bulk. I asked: "If the year were1900 and you were marooned and in need of a guide for practicalmedicine, which book would you want by your side?" My choicewas Ibn Sina. A leading reason is that Ibn Sina gives an integratedview of surgery and medicine, whereas Osler largely shuns intervention.Ibn Sina, for example, tells how to judge the margin of healthytissue to take with an amputation, a basic topic uncovered byOsler. The gap between medicine and surgery is now closing,with the advent of interventional cardiology, gastroenterology,radiology, etc. Ibn Sina correctly saw medicine . . . [Full text of this article]

John Urquhart, professor of biopharmaceutical sciences, University of California at San Francisco

Palo Alto, CA 94301 USA urquhart@ix.netcom.com

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