GREEK and other ancient influences

• Early in the 9th century, there was established in Baghdad a foundation called the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikmah), which had its own library. Its purpose was to promote the translation of scientific texts.
• The most famous of the translators was Hunayn ibn Ishaq al-`Ibadi, a Christian originally from southern Iraq who also knew Greek and Arabic.
• He was the author of many medical tracts and a physician to the caliph al-Mutawakkil
• He translated nearly all the Greek medical books known at that time, half of the Aristotelian writings as well as commentaries, various mathematical treatises, and even the Septuagint.
• Accuracy and sensitivity were hallmarks of his translating style.
• Through these translations a continuity of ideas was maintained between Roman and Byzantine practices and Islamic medicine.
• The writings of Hippocrates as well as other Greek physicians were translated around this time.
• Knowledge of medicinal substances was based initially upon the illustrated treatise on materia medica written in Greek by Dioscorides in the 1st century.
• Several Arabic translations and revisions of his treatise were undertaken in 9th-century BaghdadSpain and later.

(additional info)

• The Greek legacy underlying al-Razi's work: Galen and Hippocrates
• The Islamic physicians drew on the studies of Galen, and Hippocrates, among other great Greek physicians.
• Ancient Greek medicine had accepted the importance of open intellectual inquiry and of medical pluralism
• Galen on the other hand, coming much later as synthesizer and simplifier, had picked up only certain threads from the ancient Greek medical past, and by so doing he had all but closed the door of intellectual inquiry.
• Galen, as systemizer and simplifier had worked within a complex paradigm that posited a balanced constitution as equivalent to good health, and an unbalanced constitution as equivalent to some sort of disease condition. Galen was also very much aware of the need to keep the medical profession in being by providing it with fee-paying patrons/clients. Accordingly, he had argued that each individual client had his/her own particular balance: this balance gradually changed as the client progressed from childhood to youth to adulthood and on to old-age. Within this schema, the role of a physician was to understand the particular characteristics of his client and (for a fee) to prescribe a proper regimen for him to follow.
• Galen's paradigm also posited the division of the theory of medicine into three parts. These were the theory of the "natural" causes of disease as a deviation from the normal, the theory of "causes" and the theory of "signs."
• NATURAL CAUSES OF DISEASE
• There were seven "natural" things: the four elements (earth, air, fire, water): complexions (nine in number, a combination of hot and cold, wet and dry); the four humors (phlegm, yellow bile, black bile and blood); the four members (the brain, the heart, the liver, the testicles - two in number but counted as one); the three forces; the two actions (i.e. unconscious digestive processes and conscious movement); the three spirits; the three types of sickness.
• In addition, there were the six "non-naturals." The first five, according to Galen, were climate, motion and rest, diet, sleeping patterns, evacuation and sexuality; the sixth consisted of afflictions of the soul. Even a quick scan of this listing of categories of things and forces (each of which had a complex meaning) will convince the reader that for Galen and his followers "medicine" was really a branch of philosophy: only a well-educated specialist could begin to understand it.