Ibn Sina (Avicenna) on pathogenesis of migraine compared with the recent theories.

From its dramatic rise in the seventh century, Islamic civilization has covered a large part of the globe, incorporating many subcultures and languages into its orbit (http:// www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/arabic/med_islam.html). Islamic medicine typifies that experience, being built on the theoretical and practical knowledge first developed in Greece and Rome. For Islamic scholars, Galen (d. ca. 210 AD) and Hippocrates (fifth century BC) were pre-eminent authorities, followed by Hellenic scholars in Alexandria. Islamic scholars translated their voluminous writings from Greek into Arabic and then produced new medical knowledge based on those texts. In order to make the Greek tradition more accessible, understandable, and teachable, Islamic scholars ordered and made more systematic the vast GrecoRoman medical knowledge by writing encyclopedias and summaries (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/arabic/med_ islam.html). Drawing upon Hellenic medical tradition, Islamic medicine developed its own traditions. In turn, medieval and early modern scholars in Europe drew upon Islamic traditions and translations as the foundation for their medical enterprise. It was through Arabic translations that the West learned of Hellenic medicine, including the works of Galen and Hippocrates (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/ arabic/med_islam.html). Of equal, if not of greater influence, in Western Europe were systematic and comprehensive works such as Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine, which were translated into Latin and then disseminated in manuscript and printed form throughout Europe. During the 15th and 16th centuries alone, the Canon of Medicine was published more than 35 times (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/arabic/med_ islam.html). Avicenna’s work represented one of the first scientific encyclopedia covering logic, natural sciences, psychology, geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, and music. In the Canon of Medicine, Avicenna (980-1037 ad) surveyed the entire medical knowledge available from ancient and Muslim sources, supplementing this information with his own original contributions. The Canon became a standard of medical scienc, on a par with the works of Hippocrates (460-377 bc) and Galen (129-199 ad). The work could be found in all the important European university libraries. The Canon of Medicine consists of 5 books containing approximately 1 million Arabic words on 1000 pages, written in a completely systematic manner. 1 Avicenna begins his Canon with the following words: “It is my heart’s desire, to start off with speaking about the general and common principles of both parts of medicine, that is, theory and practice.” The Canon gained widespread popularity in the West only after the introduction of typography in the 15th and 16th centuries, but its impact throughout Europe remained steady until the end of the 18th century. Only a few modern European libraries now retain a complete Canon of Medicine (a 1482 edition in Paris, France; 1658 editions in Padua and Milan, Italy and a copy in Berlin). There is only 1 edition in a modern language (Russian), limiting an actual interpretation of this work. Recent articles considering history of theories of pathogenesis of migraine have ignored Avicenna. Villalón et al summarized in their history of theories of pathogenesis of migraine, declaring that around 400 bc Hippocrates released migraine from the realms of the supernatural by attributing it to vapours rising from the stomach to the head. They pointed out that the Hippocratic/Galenic concept of migraine survived into the 17th century, when Thomas Willis published, in 1664, his hypothesis that “megrim” was due to dilatation of blood vessels within the head (the first enunciation of a vascular theory). In 1873, Edward Liveing proposed that migraine was due to “nerve storms evolved out of the optic thalamus.” Toward the end of the 19th century, attempts were made to reconcile both theories. Thus, Moebius stated in 1898 that “parenchyma is the master, circulation the servant,” and that both brain and blood vessels dysfunctions were