Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/623

It is a far cry from the Greeks to the Saracens, though farther in time than in space. Here we find philosophy, or rather metaphysics, and medicine more intimately associated than at any other time or among any other people. Every one of the ten or twelve men who became prominent in Arabian philosophy was a physician. In fact the Arabs treated philosophy as a branch of astronomy and the healing art. The latter served a practical purpose, as did also the former in so far as it was dealt with as astrology. Arab philosophy was, however, something very different from the science that bore the same name among the Greeks. They studied philosophy, or rather they philosophized, as a man would study navigation on a ship lying at anchor. Albeit they were in this respect at no greater disadvantage than the schoolmen. The one party was chiefly concerned to make any discoveries they might light upon harmonize with the Koran and Aristotle; the other with the Bible and Aristotle, with a little spice from Ptolemy thrown in. Al-kindi, the philosopher par excellence of the Arabs, flourished in the tenth century. He wrote on almost every imaginable subject from arithmetic to astronomy, though under the former he discusses the unity of God; his arithmetic was therefore something totally different from that which forms the schoolboy's triangle with readin' and 'ritin'. So far as is at present known all his works are lost, except those on medicine and astrology. Eoger Bacon ranks him in some respects close to Ptolemy. Al-farabi was a contemporary of the preceding and is generally regarded as the earliest of the Arabian philosophers. However, medical science and even surgery could make little progress where the knowledge of human anatomy was so inadequate. The Koran denounces as unclean every person who touches a dead body, and an article of Mohammedan faith forbids dissection. We should remember, nevertheless, that the founder of anatomy, Vesalius, was sentenced to death by the Inquisition as a magician, and only pardoned on condition that he make a pilgrimage of penance to Jerusalem. This journey cost him his life. And it is probable that he would not have got off even on these relatively hard terms had he not enjoyed the favor of Philip II. of Spain, who esteemed him highly for his medical skill. We have the name of one Arab physician, Abdallatif of Bagdad, who was well aware that anatomy could not be learned from books, strange as it may seem that historians have thought it worth while to place to any man's credit a truth so easily apprehended. The same authority avers that Moslem doctors studied that branch of anatomy known as osteology by examining the bones of the dead found in cemeteries. Averroes of Cordova fills a large place in the history of Moorish philosophy in Spain about the middle of the twelfth century. But in medical renown he ranks far below Avicenna of Bokhara, who flourished about a century and a half earlier. He was teacher of both philosophy and medi-