Islamic Medicine
Changes From The Nineteenth Century Onward
Beginning with the late eighteenth century, major political and socioeconomic transformations have occurred in the Muslim world that profoundly changed medicine and public health. European medicine was introduced on a much larger scale in various ways. Students were sent to universities in Europe to learn medicine. In addition, medical schools were shaped according to the Western model, at which European professors taught European medicine in French, were founded in all major capitals of the Middle East during the first half of the nineteenth century. The first was established in 1827 near Cairo, followed shortly by a military medical school in Istanbul. The third, another military medical school, was included in a polytechnic school founded in Tehran in 1850–1851.
Despite the profound Westernization of medical theory and the medical establishment in the Muslim world, traditional Muslim medicine is still being practiced. It is not found in the state-run hospitals or in universities, but it is present at the popular level. Religious circles promote prophetic medicine, and in recent years many traditional texts have been reprinted and Internet websites devoted to this subject have been set up.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adivar [Adnan], Abdülhāk. La Science chez les Turcs Ottomans. Paris, 1939. More recent editions exist in Turkish, such as Osmanli Türklerinde I. lim. 5. basim. Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1991.
Conrad, Lawrence I. "Arab-Islamic Medical Tradition." In The Western Medical Tradition 800 BC to AD 1800, edited by Lawrence I. Conrad et al. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995. A good introduction that renders the classic by Manfred Ullman up to date.
Dols, Michael W. Medieval Islamic Medicine: Ibn Ridwan's Treatise "On the Prevention of Bodily Ills in Egypt." Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. A translation of an eleventh-century medical treatise by an Egyptian physician that reflects Muslim humoral medical knowledge of the period.
——. Majnūn: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society. Oxford: Clarendon, 1992. A study of madness in Muslim society that also includes the medical aspects of this social and cultural phenomenon.
Elgood, Cyril. A Medical History of Persia and the Eastern Caliphate from the Earliest Times until the Year A.D. 1932. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1951.
——. Safavid Medical Practice or the Practice of Medicine, Surgery and Gynaecology in Persia between 1500 A.D. and 1750 A.D. London: Luzac, 1970.
Ullman, Manfred. Islamic Medicine. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1978.
Miri Shefer
Additional topics
Science EncyclopediaScience & Philosophy: Intuitionist logic to KabbalahIslamic Medicine - Theories Composing Muslim Medicine, Hospitals, Ages Of Translations, Changes From The Nineteenth Century Onward