From the “Hundred Books on the Skills of Medicine” to “The Canon of Medicine”

Abstract

The article is devoted to the Arab medical written monument of the Middle Ages Hundred Books on the Skills of Medicine by the physician and polymath Abu Sahl Isa b. Yahya al-Masihi (approx. 9701010). Of special interest is the first chapter titled The Book of Introduction to the Art of Healing. In this book, al-Masihi aims to add and correct already known theoretical medical knowledge, and points out the need for a shorter and simpler presentation of the practical part. The article provides historiographic information to show that al-Masihis work was the program and the model for The Canon of Medicine, the fundamental and basic work of the great Arab-Islamic physician and polymath Abu Ali Ibn Sina. Having compared the structure and content of these two medical encyclopedic works and considering the historical fact that al-Masihi was a teacher of Avicenna in the art of healing, the author of the article arrives at the conclusion that the treatise Hundred Books on the Skills of Medicine could become a forerunner of Ibn Sinas Canon of Medicine. It could be the basis on which the great scientist relied in compiling his fundamental work.