huntington's disease (hd) is thought to be due to genetically-programmed degeneration of neurons in certain areas of the brain. this degeneration causes uncontrolled movements, loss of intellectual faculties, and emotional disturbances. it is along time since the disease started tormenting human beings, and to date, conventional medications have failed to slow down the progression of hd. althou...

During the Sassanid Empire in Persia (226-652 AD), there was a renaissance of humanistic sciences, including medicine, in the city of Gondi-Shapur. When the Islamic center of power moved to Baghdad in about 750 AD, physicians of Gondi-Shapur, including the dean of the medical school (a Nestorian Christian), gradually moved to Baghdad constructing hospitals and medical schools. Aided by the Pers...

[248] The passage of Greek science into Western Europe through medieval Spain has been one of the focal points of medieval intellectual history. Although the movement has been typically portrayed as a bipartite one, with translation from Greek into Arabic anteceding the flourescence of Arabic science in the ninth century, and a later phase of translation from Arabic into Latin (eleventh and twe...

In the ophthalmological treatises of the medieval Arabo-Islamic physicians such as al-Mawsili (9th-10th century), al-Kahhal (ca. 940-1010), Haly Abbas (10th century) and al Sadili (14th century) we may find references about ocular cancer, focusing on eyelid tumors and cancerous ulcers of the cornea. These references are similar to the analogous ones of ancient Greek physicians as these are pres...

A vast economic history literature suggests that medieval institutions supporting contract enforcement were necessary for impersonal exchange to emerge. Yet this literature cannot account for the bill of exchange, an important financial instrument that had positive legal standing in both the medieval Islamic and Christian worlds but remained relegated to personal networks only in the former. Th...