Synchronic and Diachronic Factors Influencing Medieval Arabic Medical Practice: A Study of Ophthalmological Fragments Found in the Cairo Genizah (2022)
This article addresses the practical aspect of medieval Arabic medicine by examining ophthalmological fragments of the Cairo Genizah, written between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. This article deals with two issues: (1) the logic behind the actual preparation of compound medicines and (2) the logic behind the entire treatment process. The first issue is examined by investigating recipes of eye medicines for leucoma (bayāḍ) recorded in genizah notebooks. By examining the four primary qualities of each ingredient, I clarify how the actual prescription of compound medicines has been grounded in the four-quality theory. The second issue is examined from a reading of two genizah letters. These letters suggest that diagnostic theory actually provided the framework for the analysis of the symptoms. The diagnoses determined medieval ophthalmologists' selection of eye medicines and their method of application.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Langermann, Y. Tzvi;
(2008)
From My Notebooks: A (The?) Geniza Fragment on Optics
(/isis/citation/CBB000930647/)
Book
Yossef Rapoport;
Emilie Savage-Smith;
(2018)
Lost Maps of the Caliphs: Drawing the World in Eleventh-Century Cairo
(/isis/citation/CBB359221646/)
Article
Gad Freudenthal;
(2016)
Samuel Ibn Tibbon as the Author of Melaḵah Qeṭanah, the Hebrew Translation from Arabic of Galen's Tegni: Probes into the Evolution of His Philosophical Terminology
(/isis/citation/CBB434282971/)
Article
Joosse, N. Peter;
Pormann, Peter E.;
(2010)
Decline and Decadence in Iraq and Syria after the Age of Avicenna? 'Abd al-Laṭïf al-Baghdädi (1162--1231) between Myth and History
(/isis/citation/CBB001020991/)
Chapter
Baker, Patricia;
(2012)
Medieval Islamic Hospitals: Structural Design and Social Perceptions
(/isis/citation/CBB001200822/)
Article
Hane Htut Maung;
(2016)
To what do psychiatric diagnoses refer? A two-dimensional semantic analysis of diagnostic terms
(/isis/citation/CBB007035563/)
Chapter
Pierdaniele Giaretta;
(2021)
Classifications from an Epistemological Point of View with Particular Attention to the Classifications of Diseases
(/isis/citation/CBB537876116/)
Article
Steven Tresker;
(2020)
A typology of clinical conditions
(/isis/citation/CBB690319995/)
Book
Edward Shorter;
Max Fink;
(2018)
The Madness of Fear: A History of Catatonia
(/isis/citation/CBB544899834/)
Article
Hein van den Berg;
(2023)
The essentialism of early modern psychiatric nosology
(/isis/citation/CBB175695180/)
Article
Åsa Jansson;
(2022)
From Melancholia to Depression: Disordered Mood in Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry
(/isis/citation/CBB956265052/)
Article
Peter Keating;
Alberto Cambrosio;
Nicole C. Nelson;
(2016)
“Triple negative breast cancer”: Translational research and the (re)assembling of diseases in post-genomic medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB354121073/)
Article
Hane Htut Maung;
(2016)
Diagnosis and causal explanation in psychiatry
(/isis/citation/CBB953313116/)
Article
Aragona, Massimiliano;
(2013)
Neopositivism and the DSM Psychiatric Classification. An Epistemological History. Part 1: Theoretical Comparison
(/isis/citation/CBB001320328/)
Article
Rachel Cooper;
(2015)
Why is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders so hard to revise? Path-dependence and “lock-in” in classification
(/isis/citation/CBB648630739/)
Article
Mauricio V Daker;
(2019)
The theory of symptom complexes, mind and madness
(/isis/citation/CBB264539507/)
Article
Rachel Cooper;
(2018)
Understanding the DSM-5: Stasis and Change
(/isis/citation/CBB641094844/)
Article
Annemarie Jutel;
(2021)
Uncertainty and the inconvenient facts of diagnosis
(/isis/citation/CBB249581784/)
Article
Jonathan Y Tsou;
(2016)
Natural kinds, psychiatric classification and the history of the DSM
(/isis/citation/CBB258474975/)
Article
Nikos Karfakis;
(2018)
The biopolitics of CFS/ME
(/isis/citation/CBB349225966/)
History of Psychiatry
Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism
Arabic Sciences and Philosophy
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science
Be the first to comment!