Soul and Body
Soul and Body
by Pauline Koetschet
The reciprocity between soul and body represents one of the core principles of Arabic medicine. Arab physicians took a massive interest in explaining the mutual influence of these two dimensions of the human being and using it to optimise treatment.
According to Arabo-Islamic physicians, the overall functioning of the body demonstrates the reciprocity between the mixture of the humours on one side and the psychological events on the other. This is the reason that primary qualities (in other words, the mixture of hot and cold on one side, and dry and moist on the other), have a strong influence on an individual’s moral character: if the mixture of the humours is globally hot, the person will get angry quickly; but if it is globally cold, he will be fearful and slow by nature. Conversely, the state of the soul has an impact on the bodily balance: psychological affections (al-ʾaḥdāth al-nafsānīya), such as anger, sadness, worry, fear, and pleasure, belong to the eight ‘non-natural’ factors that can be acted upon to modify the mixture of the humours...
Left: A 16th-century Persian miniature dipicting Ibn Sina (Avicenna) at the bedside of a patient suffering from love-sickness (ʿishq). According to Arabo-Islamic physicians, the overall functioning of the body demonstrated the reciprocity between the mixture of the humours on one side and psychological events on the other.
The soul-body reciprocity is the reason that the physician should always pay particular attention to his patient’s emotional and spiritual state. An aphorism, attributed to al-Rāzī, insists that ‘the physician, even though he has his doubts, must always make the patient believe that he will recover, for the state of the body is linked to the state of the mind’ (Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, History of Physicians, I, 314, 28–29 (trans. Pormann/Savage-Smith 2007, 41)). Sadness and anxiety are to be avoided, while music, recreational activities such as chest games and hunting, and pleasant company can all contribute to a better recovery. In many cases, physicians report the use of psychosomatic tricks as part of the treatment itself. For example, in his treatise On Melancholy, Ishāq ibn ʿImrān gives the example of a melancholic patient living near Kairouan, who believed that he did not have a head. His doctors made him wear a tiara made of lead. As a result, he realised that he had a head...
Right: Inside the Arghūn hospital in Aleppo where water features were essential. The soft sound of water soothes the mind. The architectural features of this 14th-century hospital reflect a careful cpnsideration to the needs of patients.
Continue Reading?
Click here to purchase the 1001 cures book!
"Soul and Body" by Pauline Koetschet
~ Chapter Five, Pages 60-67 ~
~ Chapter Five, Pages 60-67 ~
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.