Avicenna- The pride of Persia

By Saybhan Samat

(June 15, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Ali Sina Balkhi a legendary Persian scholar better known in the West as Avicenna was born in 980 AD in Afshana a village near Bukhara in Transoxiana and died in Hamadan in modern Iran in 1037 AD. Avicenna’s achievements are extraordinary indeed. He was a scholar that gained recognition and honour as an authority in several disciplines. He became famous as an astronomer, chemist, geologist, logician, paleontologist, mathematician, physicist, poet, psychologist, scientist and gnostic. Avicenna wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived. In fact, 150 of his surviving treatises concentrate on philosophy and 40 of them on medicine. The world best knows him for his contribution to medicine. His most famous works on medicine were “ The Book of Healing”, a vast philosophical and scientific encyclopedia and “ The Cannon Medicine” which was used as a text book in the medical universities of Europe and Asia as late as in 1650.

Ibn Sina is regarded as a father of modern medicine and clinical pharmacology particularly for his introduction of systematic experimentation and quantization into the study of physiology. He discovered the contagious nature of infections diseases, the introduction of quarantine to limit the spread of contagious diseases, the introduction of experimental medicine, evidence based medicine, clinical trials, randomized controlled trials, efficacy tests, clinical pharmacology, neuropsychiatry, risk factor analysis, the idea of syndrome and the importance of dietetics and the influence of climate and environment on health.

George Sarton, the author of the “ History of Science” wrote in the introduction to the “ History of Science”.___ “ One of the most famous exponents of Muslim universalism and an eminent figure in Islamic learning was Ibn Sina, known in the west as Avicenna ( 981-1037). For a thousand years he has retained his original renown as one of the greatest thinkers and medical scholars in history. His most important medical works are the Qanun ( Canon) and a treatise on cardiac drugs.

The Qanun fi-l-Tibb is an immense encyclopedia of medicine. It contains some of the most illuminating thoughts pertaining to distinction of mediastinitis from pleurisy, contagious nature of phthisis, distribution of disease by water and soil; careful description of skin troubles; of sexual diseases and perversions and of nervous ailments.”

For his colossal scholarly distinction in medicine and several other discipline Ibn Sina was known as “ The Supreme Master” and is credited as one of the greatest thinkers both in the Islamic world and else where. His Canon Medicine, written at the age of 21 was the best known medical text in Europe and Asia for several centuries.

It is regrettable that his later day detractors slandered him on account of envy and jealousy, by accusing him of fondness for his

slave – girls and wine, they also said that Ibn Sina would resort to prayer in the mosque and drink wine at times to receive inspiration to understand the doctrine of intuition.

These slanders have not been taken seriously, and even today Ibn Sina is revered as an outstanding Persian legendary scholar known and respected world –wide especially among the medical fraternity. Avicenna now and forever will be the pride of Persia.

-Sri Lanka Guardian