Jundhi Shapur

Abstract

AT a meeting of the Section of the History of Medicine of the Royal Society of Medicine on November 2, Dr. Cyril Elgood gave an interesting account of Jundhi Shapur, which was famous as the site of a university in south-west Persia, probably founded about A.D. 340. The Arab invasion of Persia took place when Jundhi Shapur was at the height of its fame. The city surrendered in A.D. 636, but was left undisturbed, and the University remained the greatest centre of medical learning in the Islamic world until the foundation of the school of medicine in Bagdad. The system of medicine taught at Jundhi Shapur was predominantly Greek, but indigenous medicine, Indian medicine, and possibly Chinese medicine were also studied there. The teachers of Hippocratic medicine were reinforced by the exodus of the Nestorian professors from Edessa in 489 and of the Neo-Platonists from Athens in 529. There was also a constant flow of individual Greek physicians to the Persian royal service. The importance of Jundhi Shapur lay in its being a store-house of Greek tradition when Rome was no longer the capital of the Empire and when Constantinople was more interested in theology than in science. It was the cradle of the great Arabian school of medicine and provided most of the translators who rescued Greek texts from oblivion, thus forming the source of the renaissance of medicine in Europe. Owing, however, to the constant transfer of physicians to Bagdad, the school of Jundhi Shapur declined, and by the twelfth century ceased to function.