From the standpoint of medieval Christian culture,
Avicenna’s achievement was twofold. Not only did he
return Aristotle’s and Galen’s medical thought to the
west after it had been lost for many centuries, but he also
helped establish the physician as a gentleman, whose
decorous behavior admitted him to the most intimate
circles of the wealthy and powerful. In the Islamic
world of Avicenna’s time, medicine was much more than
mere cures for sundry diseases: it was the dispensing of
learned advice about the welfare of the body. The medi-
eval Muslim physician, like Galen in the second century,
applied an intimate knowledge of nature, combined with
astrology, pharmacy, and not a few merry tales and bits
of gossip, to teach his patrons how to live well. It is not
surprising, then, that men like Avicenna, who wrote
numerous medical and philosophical treatises, also took
up poetry as a mark of their gentility.
Avicenna’s cultured, philosophical medicine had
an immediate appeal to Latin-speaking physicians.
Aristotle had said that where natural philosophy ended,
there medicine began (De sensu. Book 1,436a), but, to
the constant frustration of medieval physicians, he did
not elaborate on this point. Avicenna was the fi rst phi-
losopher to demonstrate how medicine might indeed be
a development from natural philosophy and therefore a
subject worthy of advanced study.Further Reading
Avicenna (Ibn Sina). Liber canonis. Hildesheim, 1964. (Facsimile
of the Latin edition of the Carton, Venice, 1507.)
Grant, Edward, ed. A Source Book in Medieval Science. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974, pp. 715–720.
(Includes part of the Canon, trans. into English, O. Cameron
Gruner; annot. and corrections, Michael McVaugh.)
Siraisi, Nancy. Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and
Medical Teaching in Italian Universities after 1500. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987. (The best study of the
reputation of Avicenna in medieval and Renaissance Italy.)
Faye. M. GetzAVICENNA