Avicenna's Canon in European universities

Ibn Sina, known in Europe as Avicenna, was born in 980 near Bukhara, in present-day Uzbekistan. He was a prodigy: as a young man he was already working as a physician at court. He wrote on philosophy, mathematics, astronomy and medicine, and died in 1037 in Hamadan, in present-day Iran.

Around 1025 he completed the Canon of Medicine, al-Qanun fi al-Tibb. In five books he brought together the Greek medicine of Hippocrates and Galen with Persian, Arab and Indian knowledge and with his own observations.

In the twelfth century Gerard of Cremona translated the Canon into Latin in Toledo. From the thirteenth century European scholars used the work, and from the fourteenth century it was on the curriculum of universities. In 1472 the first printed Latin edition appeared, and in Padua the Canon was still taught in 1715.

The Canon builds on the doctrine of the four humours and the temperaments. Ibn Sina worked out that doctrine very systematically, with attention to the causes, signs and treatment of diseases.

He also placed new emphasis on observation and experiment. He formulated seven rules for testing the effect of a drug, among them: test the drug on two opposite conditions, and experiment on the human body, because a test on animals does not tell everything.

Ibn Sina also wrote about contagion, about the importance of clean air and water, and about the influence of the mind on the body.

At European universities, such as Montpellier, Bologna, Padua and Paris, the Canon was one of the most important textbooks. Students read it in Latin and learned the principles of medicine from it.

The Canon was so authoritative that for a long time it was not questioned. In the sixteenth century resistance arose. According to tradition, the physician Paracelsus burned a copy in Basel in 1527, to show that physicians should look for themselves instead of following old books.

Through the work of Vesalius, Harvey and others the Canon slowly lost its place, but it continued to be read as background for a long time.

The Canon has five books. The first deals with principles. The second is a materia medica with some eight hundred simple remedies, arranged alphabetically. The third deals with diseases by part of the body, the fourth with diseases affecting the whole body, and the fifth with compound remedies.

Hundreds of manuscripts and dozens of printed editions of the Latin Canon appeared. In 1593 a printed Arabic edition was also published in Rome.

Ibn Sina also wrote the Kitab al-Shifa, the “Book of Healing”, which despite its title is about philosophy and science.

In the Islamic world Ibn Sina is still revered as one of the greatest scholars. In Unani medicine in South Asia the Canon is still a foundational work.

For historians the Canon is a key work: it shows how the knowledge of classical antiquity reached Europe via the Islamic world.

His ideas on testing drugs are sometimes seen as an early step towards clinical research.

The materia medica in the Canon describes hundreds of plants, minerals and animal remedies, with their temperament and effect.

Many remedies come from the Middle East and Asia, such as saffron, cinnamon, rose, black seed, senna, liquorice and chamomile.

Remedies were often combined into syrups, pastes and pills.

The Canon shows how much Europe owes to Persian and Arab scholars. European medicine is not built on Greco-Roman roots alone.

As history the Canon is fascinating. As medical advice it is outdated.