Paediatrics
Paediatrics
by Mahmoud Misry
In the medieval Arabic and Islamic medical tradition, physicians paid particular attention to the medical needs of children, and wrote profusely on the subject of paediatrics...
In this day and age, there are various medical encyclopaedias that comprise invaluable studies in the field of childcare and the medical well-being of children. In addition to this, there are also a number of independent works specifically dealing with pediatrics. Likewise, in the medieval Islamic world, children’s health and diseases were discussed in the great encyclopaedias and handbooks produced from the ninth century onwards, and in the monographs on the subject that developed into a genre of their own. The earliest such encyclopaedia still extant today, the Paradise of Wisdom (Firdaws al-Ḥikma) by ʿAlī bin Rabban al-Ṭabarī (fl. c. 850), dealt with the issue of children’s wellbeing on two levels, namely the physical and psychological. As regards the latter, al-Ṭabarī discussed mental, emotional, educational, behavioural, and even professional aspects. Another al-Ṭabarī, called Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad and living in the mid-tenth century, wrote a medical handbook entitled The Hippocratic Treatments (al-Muʿālajāt al-Buqrāṭīya). It included an independent section comprising sixty chapters discussing children’s diseases and their treatments...
Left: In the bathhouse (ḥammām). Miniature from a 16th-century Persian manuscript.
From the early tenth century onwards, a number of authors wrote paediatric monographs. Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyāʾ al-Rāzī (d. 925) is reportedly the author of a monograph entitled On the Treatment of Small Children. This monograph only survives in a Latin translation, made from the Arabic original, and in Hebrew translations made from the Latin. Although it appears in some manuscripts in connection with other works by al-Rāzī, it is far from certain whether al-Rāzī is the author. Be that as it may, it certainly is a very interesting paediatric treatise which had a great influence in the Latin West, surviving in more than 35 manuscripts (eds Bos/McVaugh 2015)...
Right: In school. Al-Jāḥiẓ said: ‘God has divided stupidity into 100 parts. He gave 99 parts to teachers and the last part to other people.’
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"Paediatrics" by Mahmoud Misry
~ Chapter Nine, Pages 96-103 ~
~ Chapter Nine, Pages 96-103 ~
1001 Cures Book tells the fascinating story of how generations of physicians from different countries and creeds created a medical tradition admired by friend and foe. It influences the fates and fortunes of countless human beings, both East and West.