Medieval Islamic Medicine

Abstract

In their work Medieval Islamic Medicine, Peter Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith tackle an immense topic in the guise of an “essay” (3). This short volume presents an outline of the subject that is nonetheless substantive. Rather than attempt a comprehensive survey, they chose areas that needed attention and thereby created a work that stands out on its own, yet complements the earlier scholarship of Manfred Ullmann (Islamic Medicine, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1978) and Michael Dols (Medieval Islamic Medicine: Ibn Ridwan's Treatise “On the Prevention of Bodily Ills in Egypt,” Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). As my own students can attest, Pormann and Savage-Smith's book is a welcome and much-needed addition to the field: it makes the history and principles of medieval Islamic medicine accessible to an educated lay audience. Medieval Islamic Medicine is a work that anyone with an interest in the history of medicine ought to read. As the authors state so poignantly, “the medicine that developed in Islamic lands during the medieval period had a huge impact, and not only in the lands of Islam, but in Europe…. Islamic medicine was at the core of medieval and early modern European medicine” (1). In other words, in order to comprehend the history of Western medicine, one must understand what happened in Arabic lands between the seventh and the fifteenth centuries (the time period covered in the text). There may be some who would argue this point with Pormann and Savage-Smith; however, they have undeniably done medical historians a service by dispelling common assumptions and misconceptions about Islamic medicine, such as that it preserved Greek ideas but was not itself innovative.