Is it, therefore,
matter for surprise that the majority of investigators and practitioners
should have fallen under the spell of this consummation of formalism and
should have regarded the 'Canon' as an infallible oracle, the more so
in that the logical construction was impeccable and the premises, in
the light of contemporary conceptions, passed for incontrovertible
axioms?"(13)
(12) Withington: Medical History, London, 1894, pp. 151-152.
(13) Neuburger: History of Medicine, Vol. I, pp. 368-369.
Innumerable manuscripts of it exist: of one of the most beautiful,
a Hebrew version (Bologna Library), I give an illustration. A Latin
version was printed in 1472 and there are many later editions, the last
in 1663. Avicenna was not only a successful writer, but the prototype
of the successful physician who was at the same time statesman, teacher,
philosopher and literary man. Rumor has it that he became dissipated,
and a contemporary saying was that all his philosophy could not make him
moral, nor all his physic teach him to preserve his health. He enjoyed a
great reputation as a poet. I reproduce a page of a manuscript of one of
his poems, which we have in the Bodleian Library. Prof.
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