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

Husain F. NAGAMIAISLAMIC MEDICINE HISTORY AND CURRENT PRACTICE‘Tibb or Unani’ medicine; which enables their studentsto be licensed practitioner of ‘Tibb or Unani’medicine. These students are instructed in ‘Unani’concepts of medicine. They then utilize this knowledgeand therapeutics in their practice. Their certification,licensing and supervision is controlled by theIndian Medical Council. In India both in rural andurban communities one finds practitioners of ‘Unanior Tibbi’ medicine. In Pakistan in the middle sixtiesthe government under the then President MuhammedAyub Khan ordered the official registration andlicensing of the traditional Hakims (much to the chagrinof practitioners of modern medicine)! Tibb alsoenjoys favor of public popularity in other countriesincluding Afghanistan, Malaysia and countries in theMiddle East. In the latter it has recently had a resurgencein practitioners.ConclusionThe greatest challenge of Islamic Medicine is notin its practice, therapeutics or application but in adaptationto modern day needs. Thus it is my belief thatthe fundamental challenge is not the way in whichIslamic Medicine is practiced but the way in which itis defined. Somewhere in the late 16 th century and17 th century a dichotomy developed between Islamicmedicine and Modern or Western Medicine. Thisdichotomy was mainly related to the development ofone civilization and concomitant decline of another, acycle that is an ongoing fact of history. This upsurgeof one, and slide of another civilization is no doubt anongoing phenomena that has its effect on the greatcultures of mankind. To say that one system of medicineis superior to another is akin to committing thefolly of labeling one antibiotic superior to another.Although one of them may have been discovered earlierand one later each antibiotic continues to play itsrole in a given ailment. The challenge then would beto study and define the interrelationships betweenthese and precisely define when one is more usefulthan another. Exactly the same would apply to thesetwo different systems of medicine. The roles of eachof these needs to be defined, each needs to be studiedin depth and in the light of each others progress, andeach needs to be supplemented so that humanity canbenefit from the good of each.30 JISHIM 2003, 2