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Islam and Biomedicine pp 17–38Cite as

Medical Epistemology in Arabic Discourse: From Greek Sources to the Arabic Commentary Tradition

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Part of the book series: Philosophy and Medicine ((PHME,volume 137))

Abstract

The Hippocratic Aphorisms enjoyed enormous popularity in the Arabo-Islamic medical tradition: physicians and the general public learnt them by heart; whole disciplines were defined by them; they stand at the beginning of many nosological concepts (as the case of melancholy illustrates); and they offer many sophisticated discussions of questions of medical epistemology. Because these Aphorisms were pithy sayings that are sometimes quite obscure or succinct, they elicited a large amount of exegesis. A case in point is the very first aphorism, which states that ‘experiment is treacherous and decision difficult’. It spawned a significant amount of debate about the nature of ‘experiment’ (or experience) and how to use it in order to establish medical knowledge, as Franz Rosenthal has already argued some 50 years ago in a seminal article. Recently, the whole commentary tradition has been made available in preliminary electronic editions (see Pormann, Karimullah 2017). The present chapter will focus on a number of examples for various problems of medical epistemology as they are discussed in this exegetical corpus. Examples will include more theoretical discussions about the nature of medical knowledge and practical ones about the efficaciousness of certain drugs or therapeutical processes. This will show that far from being a stagnant body of knowledge, the Arabic commentaries on the Aphorisms are a locus of intense intellectual debate and medical innovation.

Medical practice has been evidence-based since antiquity. What has changed is our understanding of what constitutes evidence(Edwards 2004: 1657).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For a recent overview of both Hippocrates and the Hippocratic Corpus, see Pormann (2018b).

  2. 2.

    See Pormann (2018a).

  3. 3.

    Craik (2015).

  4. 4.

    Van der Eijk (2016), 15–47.

  5. 5.

    Hippocrates (2005).

  6. 6.

    Galen (1985), 3–20.

  7. 7.

    Frede (1990), 225–50.

  8. 8.

    Van der Eijk (1997), 35–57; reproduced in van der Eijk (2005), 279–98.

  9. 9.

    Pormann (2011b): 493–515; and Pormann (2012), 143–62.

  10. 10.

    Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (2016), 94–7.

  11. 11.

    Pormann and Karimullah (2017): 1–52; see also, Pormann and Joosse (2012), 211–249.

  12. 12.

    It was previously thought to be an Arabic translation by Yaḥyā ibn al-Biṭrīq (d. ca. 200/815) (late 2nd/8th cent.) of a Greek original; but this assumption has been proved to be wrong by Pormann et al. (2017), pace Manfred Ullmann (2002) and Biesterfeldt (2007).

  13. 13.

    Pormann (2008), 95–118; reprinted in Pormann (2011a), 1:179–206, on p. 99–100 and 183–4.

  14. 14.

    Iskandar (1962): 238–9; translated in Pormann (2011a), 1: 207–53; the passage is conveniently discussed by Tibi (2005).

  15. 15.

    Al-Rāzī, al-Kitāb al-Ḥāwī fī al-ṭibb (1955–75), 15:122, ll. 1–3.

  16. 16.

    Pormann (2013): 370–72.

  17. 17.

    Morabia (2014).

  18. 18.

    Through personal communication with David Armstrong of King’s College London.

  19. 19.

    The website is at http://shamela.ws/index.php/book/10704

  20. 20.

    On the quality of the various editions of al-Rāzī, see Oliver Kahl (2015), xi-xiv, who argues that the Hyderabad edition remains the most reliable, despite its own shortcomings.

  21. 21.

    Greek text (10.823 K), and translation taken from Galen (2011), 242–5.

  22. 22.

    Al-Rāzī, al-Kitāb al-Ḥāwī, 14:3, l. 15–14:4, l. 2; 14:3, l. 15–14:4, l. 2. I was able to identify this quotation thanks to Weisser (1997).

  23. 23.

    Ullmann (2002).

  24. 24.

    Al-Rāzī (1955–75), 2:20, ll. 12–13.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., 2:109, l. 9.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., 19:290, l. 12.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., 23(1):304, l. 6.

  28. 28.

    Ibid., 20:123, l. 15.

  29. 29.

    Pormann (2013): 370–71.

  30. 30.

    Al-Rāzī (1955–75), 1:142, l. 2.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., 5:87, ll. 13–17.

  32. 32.

    At first, one might think that wa-naqīʿu/a/i l-ṣabiri ought to be vocalized wa-naqīʿi l-ṣabiri with the wa- taken as wāw-rubba in the sense of ‘many an aloe mucilage have I given to drink …,’ but wāw-rubba normally is followed by an indetermined noun in the genitive. Therefore, we probably just have to read wa-naqīʿu and take this as casus pendens.

  33. 33.

    Al-Rāzī (1955–75), 6:272, l. 1.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., 13:99, ll. 10–12.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., 17:25, ll. 7–8.

  36. 36.

    Pormann (2013): 371.

  37. 37.

    Iskandar (1959), 1:306, 2:107; the passage can also be found in the modern edition of the text: al-Rāzī (1987), 368.

  38. 38.

    See Pormann (2013).

  39. 39.

    See Nasser, Tibi and Savage-Smith (2009): 78–80.

  40. 40.

    Translation from Nasser, Tibi and Savage-Smith (2009) (with modifications).

  41. 41.

    MS Wellcome Or. 51, fol. 195a, ll. 20–29.

  42. 42.

    Joosse and Pormann (2010).

  43. 43.

    Fancy (2018), 46–7.

  44. 44.

    Translation from Joosse and Pormann (2010), 9–10.

  45. 45.

    Translation from Joosse and Pormann (2008), 426.

  46. 46.

    Ibid.

  47. 47.

    Joosse and Pormann (2012), 280.

  48. 48.

    Al-Baghdādī (2017), p. 21, l. 6–11: https://doi.org/10.3927/51688912

  49. 49.

    Pormann and Karimullah (2017), 28.

  50. 50.

    Rosenthal (1966).

  51. 51.

    Translation from Pormann (2017), 22 (with modifications).

  52. 52.

    Al-Kilānī (2017), p. 6, ll. 4–6 and l. 10–17: https://doi.org/10.3927/51688739 (with modifications).

  53. 53.

    I.e., requires verification to see whether it is true.

  54. 54.

    Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (1998), 191.

  55. 55.

    Fancy (2013).

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  1. University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Peter E. Pormann

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  1. Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, Oxford, UK

    Afifi al-Akiti

  2. Department of Emergency Medicine & Institute for Health and Equity, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Aasim I. Padela

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Pormann, P.E. (2022). Medical Epistemology in Arabic Discourse: From Greek Sources to the Arabic Commentary Tradition. In: al-Akiti, A., Padela, A.I. (eds) Islam and Biomedicine. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 137. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53801-9_2

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