Physicians from a lost history

Muslim civilisation developed a system of healthcare that was envied by both friend and foe.

Medicine evolved into a highly complex and variegated discipline, and physicians from diverse religious, linguistic, and ethnic backgrounds shared in its scientific discourse. It had a profound impact on surrounding cultures, notably European university medicine as it developed from the 12th century onwards.

Surgery was one of the key fields developed then.

In 10th-century Spain, called Al-Andalus then, a surgeon called Al-Zahrawi (936 - 1013), known in the West as Abulcasis, used many of the instruments we still know today, writing up his findings on surgery in the 30th volume of his massive medical encyclopaedia, Al-Tasrif, or The Method of Medicine.

Many instruments employed by Al-Zahrawi, like the surgical saws and scrapers in this manuscript, look similar to those we use today.

Al-Zahrawi lived in Cordoba, in southern Spain, and developed new surgical techniques and tools.

Mohammad Ibn Zakaraya Al-Razi, one of the most prominent physicians from Muslim civilisation, excelled as a physician, an alchemist and a mathematician.

He was born in Ray in the 9th century but lived in Baghdad. He wrote more than 200 books on medicine, music and philosophy.

Al-Razi, or Rhazes in Latin, developed new ways of classifying substances and organising chemical knowledge.

Alchemists like Al-Razi and Jabir ibn Hayyan developed and used alembic still for boiling off and condensing different parts of a liquid in a process called distillation.

Al-Razi made discoveries in his laboratory, writing up his findings in a book entitled, in true alchemical fashion, The book of the Secrets of Secrets.

Pharmaceutical industry also developed. Patients had a wide choice of medicines.

Pharmacist Sabur ibn Sahl recorded a range of remedies and their uses in the 9th century. Other doctors laid out the ways in which compounds should be mixed.

Knowledge of medicinally useful substances was summarised by herbalist Ibn al-Baytar who wrote a dictionary of three thousand plants and their uses.

The famous 11th-century scholar, Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna, built on knowledge from ancient civilisations in his influential work, The Canon of Medicine.

The book's five volumes covered medical principles, simple drugs, diseases of various body parts, general diseases and compound drugs.

It was translated into Latin in the 12th century by Italian translator Gerard of Cremona.

Musa ibn Maymun (1135 - 1204), also known in the West as Maimonades, was born in Cordoba, in Al-Andalus, when intellectual life flourished under Muslim rule. In his twenties, he moved to Fez, Morocco and then to Cairo.

Here, he became court physician to the Grand Vizier Al Qadi al Fadil, then to Sultan Saladin.

Ibn Maymun wrote several works of logic, medicine and philosophy, most famous of which is A Guide to the Perplexed, initially written in Arabic as Dalālat al-hā'irīn.

Many more physicians, surgeons, philosophers, alchemists and those working in nursing gained fame in Muslim civilisation.

Their work was largely driven by Ibn Sina's thoughts: "Medicine is a science, from which one learns the states of the human body… in order to preserve good health when it exists, and restore it when it is lacking."