Islamic Medicine History and Current Practice - International Society ...

ISLAMIC MEDICINE HISTORY AND CURRENT PRACTICEHusain F. NAGAMIAapplication have shown practical results which wouldotherwise be unexplainable by modern principles ofanatomy and physiology. For a further exposition ofthe theories of Islamic Medicine the reader is directedto read an exposition by O.C. Gruner and a desertationon the subject by Hakim Mohammed Said.More importantly however it was the fundamentalbelief of a Muslim Physician that the organic bodyalone cannot manifest life being innate and devoid ofa life force. That it was the instillation of this lifeforce or ‘Ruh’ which give its vibrance and vitality ofspirit. Thus without the ‘ruh’ no function of the bodyis possible. It is the ‘Ruh’ which descends from theAlmighty to mix with the anatomic and physiologicbody to make a complete human being. It is thusessential when treating a diseased state to take intoconsideration the ‘Ruh’ or the Soul, a concept totallyalien to the followers of Modern Medicine.Pharmacy, Pharmacognosy, MateriaMedica and TherapeuticsOne of the greatest sciences that had a great impetuson Islamic medicine was the development ofpharmacy and pharmacognosy. Chemistry or‘Alchemia’ had been studied by most IslamicPhysicians and scholars. This study was furthered byconcomitant development of techniques to refinedrugs, medications and extracts by process of distillation,sublimation, crystallization. Druggists orAttarin became commonplace in Islamic lands andtheir proliferation ultimately required the institutionof licensing of pharmacists and druggists.Pharmacological drugs were classified into simpleand compound drugs, ‘the mufraddat and themurakkabat’. The effects of these were detailed anddocumented. The earliest Islamic works on pharmacognosywere written before translation of the Greekworks of Dioscorides. Titles such as ‘Treatise on thepower of drugs their beneficial and their ill effects’and then again The Power of simple drugs’ were writtenin the third and fourth century AH/ ninth centuryAD. Most medical texts contained chapters on theuse of both these types of remedies, thus Razi’s al-Hawi mentions 829 drugs.Materia Medica and texts containing compendiaof drugs their effects appears frequently during theJISHIM 2003, 2era of Islamic Medicine. Notable amongst these is thecontribution of Abu Bakr ibn Samghun of Cardobaon ’The Comprehensive book on views of theAncients as well as the Moderns on Simple Drugs’Ibn Juljul made a commentary of drugs and plantsdescribed by Dioscorides and added a number ofnewer ones. Al-Zahrawi’s Tasrif mentioned earlier inreference to its surgical volume also had a section onplants and drugs. The second book of the Canon isdevoted to the discussion of simple drugs and thepowers and qualities being listed in charts. One of themost authoritative book on drugs was written byfamous scholar and philosopher al-Biruni entitled‘The Book on drugs’ which contains a huge compendiumof drugs, their actions and their equivalentnames in several languages.Even today perhaps the most extensive pharmacotherapyespecially as related to plant medicinal andherbal preparations can be attributed to modern dayIslamic or Tibbi Medicine and finds great favor in theIndian subcontinent often being as popular as westernor synthetic medicine. In fact western pharmaceuticalcompanies have often ‘invaded’ into this domain, theclassical example being of the extract of ‘RuwalfiaSerpentina’ a root that yielded a potent anti-hypertensivewhich was a very popular remedy for hypertensionin the sixties and which had been known to theHakims for several centuries before being exploitedby the west. No doubt in this pharmacopoeia there areother drugs equally effective in other diseases thatneed to be scientifically analyzed by random studiesand double blind clinical trials for their effectiveness!Contemporary Practice OfIslamic MedicineIslamic Medicine continues to be practiced inmany of the Islamic countries today. However westerntraditional modern medicine has replaced the coreof the health care systems in most of these countries.The only countries where it has to some degreeenjoyed an official status is the Indian Subcontinent.The three main countries of the Indian subcontinentare India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Thus in Indiathere have been established medical schools where‘Tibb or Unani’ medicine (translated as Natural medicineor Greek medicine) continues to be taught.These schools give their students a formal diploma in29