The Great Professor Ibnosina (Avicenna)

The great man was born in August, 980, Christian Era (CE)/Safar 370 after Hijra (AH) in Asfahan near Bukhara, Uzbekistan. He died in 1037 CE/428 AH in Hamadan, Iran. His early education was religious, and by the age of ten he had learned the holy Qur’an by heart. By age fourteen, he had surpassed all his mentors in school. By age 18, with his extraordinary intellect and memory, he had learned all there was to know about science at that time. He wrote his first book in philosophy at the age of twenty-one. He was a scientist, philosopher, and physician [1, 2]. Ibnosina became famous during the golden age of the Islamic civilization. He authored 276 books, many in the field of medicine and philosophy. The most famous of his books are Alshifa (The Book of Healing) and The Qanun fil tibb (The Qanun of Medicine), which means; The Code of Laws of Medicine. The Book of Healing is a scientific encyclopedia covering the natural sciences, psychology, geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, and music. This book was greatly influenced by the ancient Greeks, Aristotle and Ptolemy. It was exquisitely written. The contents were presented in an admirably coherent order, and were considered an undisputed guide to medicine, natural science, and philosophy. The theory that Venus is closer to Earth than to the Sun was first presented in this text. The Code of Law of Medicine Textbook “Qanun fil tibb’’ is based upon the writings of the Roman physician Galen, but was infused with Arabic medical lore and personal experience. Figure 2 shows the Latin copy of the Qanun fil tibb, dated 1484, located at the P.I. Nixon Medical Library at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas, USA. It is considered one of the most famous books in the history of medicine and remained a medical authority for centuries. It defined the standards for medicine in Europe, and is Ibnosina's best known written work. His principles of medicine from ten centuries ago are still taught at University of California, Los Angeles and at Yale University, among others. The book explains the causes of health and disease. Ibnosina believed that the human body cannot be restored to health unless the causes of both health and disease are determined. He had an extraordinary influence on the West, in both medical education and practice. The “Qanun fil tibb’’ in particular has had a major impact on the medical field for a thousand years. At the University of Montpelier, for example, the Qanun is the oldest known syllabus from 1309 to 1557. Osler has described Ibnosina as the "author of the most famous medical textbook ever written [3].” It is subdivided into categories such as ethics and politics and contains more than one million words divided into five volumes. Considering the time in which it was written, this is phenomenal. The first volume discusses generalities, such as physiology, health, and sickness. The second deals with pharmacology of herbs and Materia Medica, which includes the three methods: agreement, difference, and concomitant variation. Note these three methods are characteristic of modern science. The third volume focuses on special pathology of different organs. The fourth is devoted to treatment of fevers, tumors, fractures, and illnesses which spread from their locus to other parts of the body. The fifth volume concentrates on pharmacology, describing the composition and preparation of remedies as a separate science. Remarkably this was before pharmacology was considered a science. One can understand why he has been honoured as a leader in pharmacology [1]. In philosophy, Ibnosina’s theories were less abstract and closer to life than those of Aristotle, whose interpretation made philosophy less