Islamset - The Contributions of Islamic Pharmacy to Europe and Comparative Study of Medical Aspects Relating to Christian and Muslim Civilization in Middle Ages

The Contributions of Islamic Pharmacy to Europe and Comparative Study of Medical Aspects Relating to Christian and Muslim Civilization in Meddle Ages
Doc. Dr. Ali Haydar Bayat
TURKEY

ABSTRACT

After the decline of the Roman Empire, Christianity took place and root in Europe, a scholastic millenium characterized by apathy and avoidance against science and new developments had been experienced. The basic underlying cause was that Christian mentality opposed to science and had been in conflict with it. With the success of the Church, there was only one belief left: Bible coupled with its interpretation by the Church.

The Church had not precluded the continuation of medicine owing to the miracle that Christ resurrected the dead, among others. However, medical sciences had shown a stagnation and decline for ages until the dawn of new ideas of Renaissance, which terminated the old-fashioned ongoing traditions.

Humanity had witnessed incredible great advances in scientific fields together with improvements in human reason and moral values, due to the advent of Islam and its civilization in this dark period or Christian era. Since Arabic language was used as a cultural and scientific tool, exchanging of knowledge easily and rapidly became possible among Muslim nations and, in due course, medicine had progressed in great deal and pioneered the European medicine in attaining today's status by having influenced the West indisputably for 600 years, due to such factors as the importance that Islam attached to this field, transfer of emipric medicine among Muslim nations in Islamic civilization, translation of secular medical text books improved by Greeks into Arabic and taking Cundishapur hospital and school of medicine as an example.

There was a vast, incomparable difference between Islamic medicine and European Christian medicine in middle ages in favor of Islamic one:

The belief that diseases were brought as a result of sin accompanied by another that was the cause of many diseases in the Old Testament were attributed to God's damnation or Satan's evil deeds in Christian world.

In contrast to the West, diseases were attributed to the invisible agents and that infectious diseases transmitted via contaminated dress, ear-ring, dishes, etc. were very well known in Muslim world.

Particular places were to be made available for saints who were believed to remedy every disease by means of religious and magical symbols instead of drugs in Europe.

Yet in monasteries, based upon the extent of permission the Church gave, prescriptions of Hoppocrates and Galen were being used. Conversely, in Islamic world; a vide variety of drugs either single or in combination stemmed from countless vegetal origins were in common usage. And there were books delineating synthesis of drugs, their usage, and dosages. Pharmacy had been separated from medicine as an independent field.

Medical education in Europe was to be instructed in monasteries whereas secular medical education and its applications in hospitals of today's understanding were to be performed in Muslim world.

* As the full text could not be made available, we are publishing here the abstract only.
Editors

While Christians didn't pay any attention to hygienic rules and didn't even advise them, in that era, Islam took it seriously and attached importance to cleanliness by regarding it as a half of the religion and prohibited or encouraged many salient points in temps of preventive medicine.

So the advanced status of Muslim medicine and pharmacy spread into through Sicily and Andulus in middle ages in Europe, and in a short time, the Islamic classics were translated into Latin and the understanding of medicine and pharmacy of Islamic civilization spread into Europe.