Islam and medieval medicine

• Islam and Arab hospitals: medical students trained with doctors and the first hospitals for mental health were created
• Prophet Muhammad: ''for every disease Allah has a cure', 'seek learning even as far as China''
• Caliphs and learning


  • Peace and order needed for medical progress
  • Greek manuscripts translated to Arabic in Baghdad
  • House of Wisdom, presented hundreds of Ancient Greek medical books
• Avicenna


  'canon of medicine' encyclopaedia, listed medical properties of 760 drugs, chapters on anorexia and obesity, go-to medical textbook in Europe until the 1600s
• Rhazes


  • Distinguished measles from smallpox
  • Wrote over 200 books
  • Thought that students should improve on the work of the teacher
  • Rhazeal RAISES 'doubts about Galen'
• Surgery, use of drugs


  • Arabs very skilled in the use of drugs
  • Camphor and Senna still used today
  • Anaesthetise with sponge soaked in opium
• Ibn al-Nafis


  • Islamic doctors often used observation and experimentation
  • He challenged Galen
  • Medical ideas reached universities of Padua and Bologna, Italy, then England through trade