Journal of - International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine

Ibn Miskaweih’s Innovations in Medicine
Amira AUMARI
Ibn Miskaweih’s Medicine of body and soul
Ibn Miskaweih is creative in his thinking in this regard,
where he says: “Since the medicine of body dividing into
two parts: one is preserving the health if available, and the
other is to recover it, if was absent, we should divide it like
that to regain our health or preserve it”
Do we understand that he gave a precise definition to
the word “medicine”: which is the preservation of health or
recovering it.”
To cultivate the moral health, Ibn Miskaweih asks person
to associate with similar personalities (as himself)
those who are friendly with, say good words, avoid bad
behaviors and words, because that would harm the moral
health, where its treatment is difficult and needs a long
time, therefore such a person has to keep himself apart
from this mental illness, by controlling his mind habituate
his soul to hear good words and funny conversations,
which are well-balanced and controlled by mind.
Ibn Miskaweih depends on using beautiful words and
phrases on purpose i.e. language controlled by mind (nerve
impulses), as well as the language of the senses and organs,
to preserve health of soul and body. This explains the following
when somebody meets a friend by saying:
…Should be met anybody with magnanimous and
good-hearted, by showing your gladness in your eyes, your
movements, and your lineaments when looking at you.
Such movements increase the love and gratification every
day and under any circumstances. One can notice also the
pleasure of all your organs.
Is not this Ibn Miskaweih’s approach goes in the field
of science that called today “neuro-linguistic programming”
Yes, definitely, because NLP is the ability of the nervous
system to organize and programming information our
bodies, souls and brains receive throughout our daily lives
(pictures, words, sounds, smells, feelings .. etc.) then the
output will affect our lives internally and externally in expressions
(dialogue) behaviors, thinking and performance,
that enable us to reach the desired goal.
This is also called a “modern administration of mind”
that has advocated by Ibn Miskaweih.
Serotonin is neurotransmitters, works to organize the
various patterns of behavior as motive actions, mood, sleep
and appetite, etc., its deficiency leads to depression and
mania. It considers a vanguard of the hormone melatonin
secreted from the pineal gland, which gives a sense of calm
and tranquility.
Also to preserve the health of the body, Ibn Miskaweih
finds that the basis of cultivation health is the movement
and lack of laziness, i.e. sport. Sport preserve practically the
soul, by isolating from apathy, laziness and stupidity.
“If you get used to laziness and opted to rest, then you are
about to die because you back it to animal levels, out of its reality”
As we know that sport release the emotional physical charges,
therefore release the internal psychological charges, that
comes in the context of one motto “movements generate
health and bless”
Ibn Miskaweih found a dialectical relationship between
the preservation of the health of body and soul through
finding several factors that preserve the health of the soul
and body. One of these factors is to preserve health by controlling
two powers “power of sensuality and power of anger”,
person has not to let them controlled and mislead him,
he did not know the right from the false, lost between good
and evil and became rough like animals, then have to deal
with his soul and his body, but calls for these two powers,
the time his body needs to any of them, and not let them
occur automatically at any time his needs recall them. Because
when body needs those two powers, they “agitate in
need” because God gave us these two powers to use them
when needed not to follow them.
He explains this saying by a piece of advice to a person,
he has not to remember what happened to his desires or
to his soul when seeking for these two powers as a goal, he
will no more distinguish between good and evil, and things
mixed in the mind. He has to let those powers to do their
natural function as God order them.
Duties of health keeper
Ibn Miskaweih suggests some duties on the one who
preserve the health of both soul and body:
1. Has to adopt measures to save his body and soul, not
to harm them by customs he used to do them, where
he has to use the organs (Ibn Miskaweih says: tools
of the body and soul) to maintain his health, otherwise
it is as a punishment to the self with harmful
things, for instance eating unhealthy food, or unable
to prevent himself from eating unhealthy food, what is
meant here is the health of body not pleasure of body.
“The one who wants to remedy the hunger and thirst,
which are two paining diseases, he has not to ask for the
pleasure of body rather of the health of body”
The one who seeks for pleasure not for the health,
he wouldn’t get his health when the pleasure ends, and
ISHIM 2011-2012
15