Islamic medicine

 











I stumbled across an interesting article—another dusty old scholarly article in a dusty old scholarly journal, dated 1849, long before PC MC (Politically Correct Multi-Culturalism) had become dominant and mainstream throughout the West (though even back then, as I noted in a previous post here on this blog, there were incipient signs of the PC MC mentality).

The article in question is: “On the Present Condition of the Medical Profession in Syria”, by C. V. A. Van Dyck, in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 1, No. 4. (1849), pp. 559-591.

Even writing in 1849, Van Dyck (a doctor and Christian missionary to the Middle East) could discern the backward primitivism of Muslim societies and the comparatively advanced medicine of the West, already modern in his time. And we can be reasonably confidant that any significant progress in medicine that has been made in the Middle East since that time has been wholly due to Western influence.

I will here provide a few interesting quotes, illuminating some features of the pathology of the Islamic mind, from his article:

Much has been said about Arab science in general, and high praises have been bestowed upon Arab philosophers; but I imagine that a full development of facts would show, that by far the greater part of Arab science has been derived from Greek sources. Although great praise may justly be given to the Arab nation as the preservers of science, they deserve none as discoverers. Even their claims as the originators of chemistry, so long conceded, have proved unfounded, and the most that can be said in their favor is that they made some improvements in what they derived from extraneous sources; and, by their conquests in the north of Africa and in Spain, became the means of awakening Europe from its lethargy, and of introducing into its seminaries of learning branches of science for which they were themselves indebted to Greece and India...

Islamism, in itself considered, must be regarded as a desolating superstition. The same principle which led the Khalifeh 'Omar to order the burning of the Alexandrian library, has since then worked the ruin of many a fair structure, and given the death blow to many a worthy enterprise. Improvement among the Osmanli Turks began, when their religion began to lose its hold upon their minds.

Small as is the amount of medical knowledge among the Arabs, at the present day, the means of obtaining it are still more limited. Medical works, like all others, exist only in manuscript; and there are few persons who have the means of gathering around them more than two or three of the minor ones. The efforts of Mohammed 'Ali in Egypt have secured the establishment of medical institutions and hospitals, where numbers of Egyptian youth are instructed according to the principles of the French school, and European works upon the various departments of medicine, and other sciences, have been translated into Arabic and printed.

Though, as has been stated, the means of acquiring an adequate knowledge of modern medical science are altogether wanting in Syria, and the ancient authors are accessible to few, yet this does not prevent any individual, high or low, rich or poor, learned or unlearned, from setting up as a practitioner at any moment. Almost innumerable are the instances in which poor tradesmen, mechanics, and farmers, suddenly conceiving the idea of practicing medicine, leave their several employments, buy a lancet, or grind an old knifeblade into the shape of one, and give themselves out as Doctors; and strange to say, all these individuals find more or less encouragement.

Incapacity to read and write forms no impediment to becoming a physician, and we find many of these vain pretenders going about bleeding, and administering medicines, from simple colored water to the powerful elaterium [extract of a type of cucumber].

A great majority of the present Arab physicians have not the slightest idea of the true anatomical structure of the human frame. Even those very few who have studied the descriptions of Avicenna, have no clear conception of the arrangement, or relative position, or functions of the different organs of the body. One of the most respectable physicians of Tripoli, a man tolerably well read in Arabic medical literature, maintained very strenuously that the liver occupied the left side of the abdominal cavity. Another, who was prescribing for a patient dying from ulceration of the bowels, declared the disease to be an "opening of the lungs." Another declared a case of bloody urine to be caused by "wind in the bladder." The pain in the back and loins which always accompanies fever, is often treated by a local abstraction of blood. Pain in the stomach is universally denominated ''pain in the heart." Cynanche tonsillaris is supposed to be caused by the tonsils, called “daughters of the ears", falling down upon the pharynx, and relief is to be obtained by "lifting them up", which is done by gentle pressure upon the tonsillar region, accompanied by friction with the thumbs along the under margin of the jaw, over its angle, towards the ears.

The only difference known between arteries and veins, is that the former pulsate and the latter do not... This entire ignorance of anatomy must continue as long as the present superstitious horror of mutilating the dead prevails.

Autopsic examinations could not be obtained in one out of a thousand cases, and dissections are out of the question.

The most implicit reliance is placed upon the state of the pulse, as an indication of health or disease, and a knowledge of its varieties is supposed to enable a person to distingtiish all morbid affections, without any inquiry into other symptoms. The patient comes to the physician, and holds out his hand; the pulse is felt in each wrist successively, and if by previous knowledge of his habits, or by catching some complaint which he may have dropped to the bystanders, the practitioner can make out the case within any reasonable degree of probability, he is content; if not, he draws out in a random conversation enough to enable him to prescribe upon some sort of foundation, but at the same time conveying the idea that his whole dependence is upon the pulse, and his knowledge of the disease derived altogether from that source. So far is this confidence carried, that women in doubt as to their situation present themselves before a physician, that he may decide from the pulse whether they are pregnant, or otherwise, and whether the foetus be a male, or a female; all of which the physician determines with the utrnost gravity and assurance, and a thousand failures can not destroy the confidence built upon a single successful "guess."

Credulity and a fondness for the miraculous still form as prominent traits in the Arab character, as in former times. The story of the king Yunau and the sage Duban, which is familiar to every reader of the Thousand and one Nights, is only akin to many others of a similar character still current in the East.

The confidence in charms and amulets, so implicit in former days, is not at all diminished in the present age. Smallpox is supposed to be communicated merely by a glance of the eye, and consequently various cases are excluded from view as carefully as possible.

Of the science of chemistry the Arabs are entirely ignorant. ... The Arabs understand by chemistry what we understand by alchemy, namely, the art of converting the baser metals into gold and silver. They still hold to the theory of four elements : fire, air, earth, and water, and all the metals and precious stones are supposed to be cooked in the bowels of the earth, by a natural process, such as the combined influence of the sun, moon and stars.

Of botany, as a science, quite as little is known as of chemistry. Although, as has been remarked, most of the articles of the materia medica are derived from the vegetable kingdom, yet plants are known only by names, not by descriptions, and, as names vary with localities, inextricable confusion arises from this source. It would be difficult to recognize any of the plants mentioned by Avicenna, merely from his descriptions, and different names are often given to the same thing in different places, or the same name is given to widely different things. From the almost total ignorance which prevails, in regard to all generic and specific distinctions, or similarities, every plant is considered as existing per se, and to bear no relation to others, except perhaps in the case of a few garden vegetables, or cultivated flowers. An Arab sees the widest difference, but no similarity, between the egg-plant, tomato and potato, and knows no difference between the red anemone and wild poppy.

[Bloodletting:]

Those who have not the means of obtaining a good European lancet, use an iron one manufactured by any smith of ordinary dexterity, and cases are not infrequent in which the operation is performed with a pen-knife, or even with a piece of glass, or a sharp flint. It is needless to add that these instruments are often broken in the flesh, and produce serious consequences.

From the entire ignorance of anatomy which prevails, and to which allusion has been made, it is the custom in the case of fat persons, whose veins are small and not distinguishable by the eye, to feel for the artery at the bend of the arm, and dive down upon it; but as the vein usually crosses the artery at the point where the pulsations of the latter are most distinctly perceptible, it is pierced first, and the blood, gushing out by the sides of the lancet, informs the operator that he has gone deep enough. To one who is aware of the frequency with which all classes resort to this operation, for headaches, stomachaches, colds, rheumatic pains, and the most trifling affections, it becomes a matter of surprise, not that accidents occur, but that they do not happen a thousand fold more often.

[Cautery:]

As is the case with blood-letting, the cautery is resorted to for the most trifling complaints, and scarcely an individual can be found who has not a greater or less number of cicatrices from this cause.

The connection between barbers and surgeons, in the East, is not yet altogether dissolved, and those "most worshipful" gentry still bleed, leech, cauterize, draw teeth, and perform sundry other operations connected with the chirurgical art. 

The operation of extracting "disorderly" grinders is performed without any previous division of the gum, sometimes with a hawksbill, and sometimes with a straight forceps, which break the tooth quite as often as they extract it. Physicians, so called, confine themselves to the practice of medicine, but those who pass for surgeons act in either capacity, pro re nata [as the occasion arises].

The Arabs have a superstitious dread of all surgical operations, especially such as mutilate the body, and often prefer death to undergoing them.  [No doubt this is why so many Muslims inflict mutilations on their jihad victims -- H.]

Ulcers [of the skin] are also treated with resinous salves, and when these fail, resort is had to the most vile and irritating applications, such as gunpowder, coarsely powdered charcoal, and dung; and instead of being duly cleansed, they are scrupulously guarded from water.

Most individuals have a great dread lest any one but a physician should see their sores, from a superstitious notion that the eye exerts an evil influence upon them.

Pleasant odors are considered as highly injurious to patients affected with ulcers, and still more so in cases of fresh wounds, but disagreeable smells are accounted harmless; and so the patient goes about with an onion under his nose, lest an agreeable odor should accidentally meet his nostrils, and thereby injury to the sore be occasioned.

Concussions from falls, or from blows, are treated with bloodletting, without waiting for reaction. It is also common in such cases to wrap the patient in a warm sheep-skin, just stripped from the animal, lest the blood, becoming cold, should "settle" in the injured part.

Besides this, wherever it is practicable, the patient is made to drink a decoction of the hand, or foot, or some other part, of one of the mummies brought from Egypt, and great reliance is placed on the efficacy of this vile stuff in preventing any unpleasant consequences.

Fractures and dislocations are treated by a class of professed "bone-setters" Many times, these impostors succeed in convincing a person who has received a slight sprain, that it is a bad dislocation, and pull and tug thereat, in order to magnify their own skill in the eyes of the beholders, and get a larger fee from the patient. Old women have sometimes acquired great celebrity in this sort of practice, generally by reducing luxations which never occurred, or fractures which never happened. In cases of undisputed fracture, tight bandages are applied without waiting for the occurrence or subsidence of swelling, and no effort is made to secure any degree of counter-extension.

Insanity is generally attributed to Satanic possession, and no remedies are used for it, except confinement, exorcising, or a pilgrimage to the shrine of some saint. Khat, writing, alluded to previously [where if a person writes down a curse upon a piece of parchment or paper, it has powerful effects upon his enemy], is supposed often to be a cause of mental derangement, and "counter-writing" is the only remedy relied upon.