Vagbhata: author of Compendium in the Heart of Medicine

Indian medicine emerges from the dense cloud of mythology into the light of history with Charaka, Susruta, Vagbhata often addressed as the Vriddha-traya or the venerable triad.

Vagbhata is regarded as the author of one of the three major medical source-books in India; he is classed with Charaka and Susruta. He is the most celebrated author in the history of medicine.

It was said that he lived in the sixth century; he is in any case earlier than the tenth century.

Vagbhata, son of Simhaguota was named after his grandfather, the great physician Vagbhata: he hailed from the Sindhu country.

He studied medicine under his own father and later under a Buddhist mendicant and physician named Avalokia.

The most common used text of Vagbhata is the Astan'gahrdayasamhita (Compendium in the Heart of Medicine) which is considered the greatest synthesis on Ayurveda ever produced.

The work is quoted in the Firdaws al-Hikma or Paradise of Wisdom composed in AD 850 by the Persian physician Ali Ibn Sahl Rabban at Tabari who gives a very complex summary of the Ayurvedic doctrines.

Vagbhata was the first author who mentioned the concept of medical astrology in his writings. He wrote that the course of illnesses.
Vagbhata: author of Compendium in the Heart of Medicine

Ibn Juljul - Andalusian author

Ibn Juljul al-Andalusi, Sylayman ibn Hasan was born in Cordoba in AD 943. He died ca, 994.

He studied medicine with a gorup of Hellenists presided over  by Hasday ibn Shaprut, a Jewish physician and vizier of the Caliph Abd Al-Rahman II. Ibn Juljul later became medical advisor of the Caliph Hisham II (976-1009).

Ibn Juljul is the author of Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbā’ w’al-hukamā’ (Generations of physicians and Wise Men), the oldest extant summary in Arabic on the history of medicine, after Ishaq ibn Hunayn’s  Ta’rij al-atibba (History of the Physician)

In Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbā’ w’al-hukamā’ Ibn Juljuul enumerates medical doctors practicing during the reigns of Muhammad and Abd al-Rahman II.

These include a monk named Jawad, famed for his medicines and potions; Khalid Ibn Yazid Ruman, similarly reputed for his botanical drugs and Ibn Maluka, a Cordoban surgeon and bleeder who had thirty chairs for patients set up at the door of his house.

It contains fifty-seven biographies grouped into nine generations; thirty-one of them concern Asian authors and the rest refer to African and Andalusian scholars.

A number of these are Christians, whose main medical manual is a world known as ‘The Aphorisms’ of which an updated version in five books was produced by the Muslim doctor Yahya b. Imam.

Ibn Juljul mentioned several Christian physicians, whom he said were the most eminent medical men in al-Andalus until the middle of the ninth century, when medical texts arrived from the east and Christian learning became obsolete.

Ibn Juljul also wrote Tafsir asma al-adwiya al-mufradat min kitab diyusquridis (An Explanation of the names of Simple Drugs in the book of Dioscorides).

Ibn Juljul has explained the terms for simple remedies in the work of Dioscorides from ‘Ain Zarbah and clarified their hidden meaning.
Ibn Juljul - Andalusian author

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