Arabic medical writing, which invoked the classical authorities Hippocrates and Galen, frequently reflected on the supreme value of human health. These writings invested a unique degree of responsibility in the physician – acting both for the health and life of his patient and in the interest of the patient’s family and of society in general – and a particular ‘nobility’ (sharaf) in the art of medicine. As in classical antiquity, the scholarly physician operating in classical Islamic times was expected not only to have mastered a set of medical handbooks and to gain continually in practical experience, but also to have acquainted himself with a canon of ethical standards and codes of conduct. The famous Hippocratic Oath, the charter of medical ethics ascribed to the founder of medicine, and the so-called Testament of Hippocrates were well known throughout the history of medicine, and they act as the most fundamental witnesses for the presence of Greek concepts in Islamic medicine. In the Arabic version of the Hippocratic Oath, preserved in a seventh/thirteenth-century history of Arabic physicians, we read that the student of medicine pledges to honour his teacher as his father and his teacher’s family as his own family, and to share with them livelihood and medical instruction...
Left: A manuscript from al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt dipicting cuppring performed by a charlatan.