So that he found medicine
was an easy subject, not hard and thorny like mathematics and
metaphysics! He worked night and day, and could solve problems in his
dreams. "When I found a difficulty," he says, "I referred to my notes
and prayed to the Creator. At night, when weak or sleepy, I strengthened
myself with a glass of wine."(12) He was a voluminous writer to whom
scores of books are attributed, and he is the author of the most famous
medical text-book ever written. It is safe to say that the "Canon" was
a medical bible for a longer period than any other work. It "stands for
the epitome of all precedent development, the final codification of all
Graeco-Arabic medicine. It is a hierarchy of laws liberally illustrated
by facts which so ingeniously rule and are subject to one another, stay
and uphold one another, that admiration is compelled for the sagacity
of the great organiser who, with unparalleled power of systematisation,
collecting his material from all sources, constructed so imposing an
edifice of fallacy. Avicenna, according to his lights, imparted to
contemporary medical science the appearance of almost mathematical
accuracy, whilst the art of therapeutics, although empiricism did
not wholly lack recognition, was deduced as a logical sequence from
theoretical (Galenic and Aristotelian) premises.
Pages:
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150