The Surgery of Abulcasis (936-1013) Contributions of the Kitab Al-Tasrif Treatise to Modern Surgery

Document Type : Short Communication

Author

Ph.D., University Hospital of Jaen, School of Medicine, University of Jaen, Spain

Abstract

The Arab occupation of the Iberian peninsula had an important influence on the scientific development of Europe. Medicine at that time had a great influence on the classical authors, although the Muslim doctors Rhazes and Avicenna began to stand out, and had a very prominent influence until the Renaissance (Compier, 2012, pp. 3-25).
The most important century of Spanish Arab Medicine is the 12th, in which the figures of Avenzoar, Averroes, and Maimonides appear, the latter being of Jewish origin (Martín-Araguz, et al, 2002, pp. 877-892). In previous centuries Ibn Habib, Abulcasis, Ibn Yulyul, Arid Ben Said El Kateb, and Abenguefit stood out (Tschanz, 2003, p. 9; Otero Tejero, et al, 2007, pp. 859-868). Without a doubt, and from the surgical point of view, we should center our interest on Abulcasis, as he was the first surgeon born in the Iberian peninsula to integrate the surgery into the doctrinal body of medicine, with the same category and level of knowledge.
Abulcasis made an impact on the history of surgery with his multilevel work. Abulcasis was the first Arab-Hispanic doctor from Al Andalus who wrote a treatise on surgery (Amr, 2007, pp. 220-221). He was based on his predecessors of the Greek and Roman school of medicine as well as the Arabic knowledge in pharmacology (Markatos, 2019, pp. 2199-2203), but also he was a great innovator himself; he succeeded in inventing surgical instruments used in practice until nowadays in their most basic principle. Twelfth-century Latin translations of medical works written in Arabic have had a significant influence on the development of modern medicine (Masic, et al, 2017, pp. 364-372).

Keywords

References

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Journal of Research on History of Medicine
Volume 12, Issue 1
February 2023
Pages 63-68

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