AVICENNA

(930-1037)

By: Abhilasha Daftuar

 Introduction
■ Avicenna, Arabic Ibn Sīnā, in full Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd
Allāh ibn Sīnā, (born 980, near Bukhara, Iran [now in Uzbekistan]—
died 1037, Hamadan, Iran), Muslim physician, the most famous and
influential of the philosopher-scientist  of the medival islamic world.
He was particularly noted for his contributions in the fields of
Aristotelian philosophy and medicine. He composed the ’kitāb al-
shifā’ (Book of the Cure), a vast philosophical and scientific
encyclopedia, and Al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb (the cannon of medicine), which
is among the most famous books in the history of medicine.
Avicenna did not burst upon an empty Islamic  intellectual stage. It is believed that
Muslim writer Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, or possibly his son, had introduced Aristotelian
logic to the Islamic world more than two centuries before Avicenna. Al-kindi, the
first Islamic Peripatetic (Aristotelian) philosopher, and Turkish polymath al-Fārābī,
from whose book Avicenna would learn Aristotle’s metaphysics, preceded him. Of
these luminaries, however, Avicenna remains by far the greatest.
Influence in philosophy and science

■ In 1919–20 British Orientalist and acclaimed authority on Persia Edward G. Browne

opined that “Avicenna was a better philosopher than physician, but al-Rāzī [Rhazes] a
better physician than philosopher,” a conclusion of repeated ever since. But a judgment
issued 800 years later begs the question: By what contemporary measure is an appraisal
of “better” made?
■ Several points are needed to make the philosophical and scientific views of these men
comprehensible today. Theirs was the culture  of the  Abbāsid Caliphate (750–1258), the
final ruling dynasty built on the precepts of the first Muslim community (ummah) in the
Islamic world. Thus, their cultural beliefs were remote from those of the 20th-century
West and those of their Hellenistic predecessors.
Avicenna’s cosmology centralized God
as the Creator—the First cause, the
necessary Being from whom emanated
the 10 intelligences and whose
immutable essence and existence
reigned over those
intelligences.

The First Intelligence descended on

down to the Active Intelligence, which
communicated to humans through its
divine light, a symbolic attribute
deriving authority from the Qurʾān.
Cannon of Medicine

Avicenna pioneered the idea of taking Avicenna also created the idea of
pulse from the wrist. intubation
Seven Rules of Testing Drugs
■ The drug must be free from any extraneous accident quality.
■ It must be used on a simple not composite disease.
■ The drug must be tested with two contrary types of diseases, because sometimes a drug
cures one disease by its essential qualities and another by its accidental ones.
■ The quality of the drug must correspond to the strength of the disease. For example;
there are some drugs whose heat is less than the coldness of certain diseases, so that
they would have no effect on them.
■ The time of action must be observed so that essence and accident are not confused.
■ The effect of the drug must be seen to occur constantly or in many cases for if this did
not happen it was an accidental effect.
■ The experimentation must be done with the human body for testing a drug on a lion or a
mouse might not prove its effect on humans.
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