Kitab al-Tasrif by Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi

Kitab al-Tasrif by Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi
Kitab al-Tasrif is an encyclopedia on medicine and surgery. It was written and completed in year 1000 AD by Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi.

Abu al-Qasim was known as a father of modern surgery. He was born at Medinat al-Zahra near Cordoba on 936 A.D and died in 1013 AD. He descended from Ansar tribe of Arabia who had settled earlier in Spain. Kitab Al-Tasrif was his outstanding contribution in medicine.

Kitab al-Tasrif known also known as ‘Concessio ei data qui componere haud valet’ in Europe and it’s in 30 volume work covering anatomy, diseases, nutrition, surgery, medicine, orthopedic, ophthalmology and pharmacology. Abu al-Qasim also wrote the importance of doctor-patient relationship.

In his last and the largest volume of Al-Tasrif was nothing less than the greatest achievement of medieval surgery. It was the first independent surgical treatise ever written in detail. It included many pictures of surgical instruments, most invented by Abu Al-Qasim himself, and explanations of their use.

He was the first medical author to provide illustrations of instruments used in surgery. His treatise of surgery contains approximately 200 such drawings ranging from a tongue depressor and a tooth extractor to a catheter and elaborate obstetric device. He is a great surgeon in medieval Islam and also a great educationist based on his substantial section in the Al-Tasrif to child education and behavior table etiquette school curriculum and academic specialization.

It was translated to Latin by Gerald of Cremona in 12th century. The last edition was that of John Channing in Oxford (1778) this contains both the original Arabic text and its Latin translation on alternative pages.
Kitab al-Tasrif by Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi

History of Anesthesiology

History of Anesthesiology
Anesthesiology is a knowledge or study how to have a condition of having sensation blocked. Other definition is “reversible lack of awareness”. This will allow patients to undergo surgery and procedures without feel pain.

In ancient Incas, shaman coked up chewed coca leaves and drilled holes in the heads of their patients while splitting into the wounds they’d inflicted.

Dated in 4200 BC, Sumerian people used opium poppies as herbal remedy. Opium then was introduced to China in 330 BC and India in 600 BC.

Assyrian and Egyptian physicians obtained artificial sleep for their patient by quickly compressing the Carotid vessels of their neck. This practice was followed as well by the Greek physicians. Arab translation of the Greek medicine helped to make Islamic physicians supreme in the middle ages.

Abulcasis and Avicenna wrote about anesthesia in their book: Al-Tasrif and The Canon of Medicine. Baghdad at that time became the world’s leading medical and drug center. With the skill of the Arab Alchemists, the art of drug making began to evolve into the science of Pharmacology. Western physicians emerging from the Middle Ages found the Arab pharmacopoeia, in which a list of medicinal plants composed the anesthetic armamentarium.

British Chemist Humphry Davy in 1799 discovered a nitrous oxide or a laughing gas that have anesthetic quality. The discovery was ignored until Connecticut dentist Horace Wells began to experiment using nitrous oxide as an anesthetic during tooth surgery.

In 1846, dentist, William Thomas Green Morton performed the first public demonstration of diethyl ether (then called sulfuric ether) as an anesthetic agent, for a patient undergoing an excision of a vascular tumor from his neck. Chloroform was introduced as a surgical anesthetic by Scottish obstetrician James Young Simpson in 1847. Although it can eased pain of labor, chloroform had higher risks than those associated with ether.

The first effective local anesthetic was cocaine. Isolated in 1859, it was first used by Carl Koller, at the suggestion of Sigmund Freud, in ophthalmic surgery in 1884.

Chemical substance that has a morphine-like action, Opioids was first used by Racoviceanu-Piteşti, who reported his work in 1901.
History of Anesthesiology