Pharmacology
Pharmacology
by Leigh Chipman
Pharmacy can signify both a field of knowledge dealing with drugs and their preparation (also called pharmacology), as well as the profession concerned with the provision and sale of drugs.
Books on medicine were among the first scientific works to be translated into Arabic during the translation movement of the eighth to tenth centuries. The pharmacological tradition in Arabic is based on the Hellenistic one, featuring the works of Galen and Dioscorides in particular, but goes far beyond it. The addition of materia medica from further east – India, China and Southeast Asia – that was unknown to classical authors is an important characteristic of pharmacy in the Islamic world. Books were devoted to the materia medica unknown to the Greeks, and the most commonly used plants included myrobalans (Terminalia spp.) from India, lemons from China, and cloves from Southeast Asia...
Left: Books on medicine were among the first scientific works to be translated into Arabic during the translation movement of the 8th to 10th centuries. This image from a copy of the Arabic translation of Dioscorides’ On Medical Substances dipicts what’s happening inside a pharmacist’s shop.
Pharmacology is considered to be one of the medical fields in which the Arabs excelled: this is an area that developed its own specialist monographic literature, in addition to chapters in medical compendia. As noted, the range of materia medica known to the Arabs greatly surpassed that of the classical world, owing to the extent of the Islamic empires and their trade contacts with the Indian and Chinese medical traditions; however, pharmacological theory seems to have remained strictly within the confines of Galenic humouralism, admitting no influence from further east...
Right: The description of malabathron (sādhaj) in the Arabic translation of Dioscorides’ Medical Substances. The face of the person collecting the malabathron has been erased.
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"Pharmacology" by Leigh Chipman
~ Chapter Six, Pages 68-75 ~
~ Chapter Six, Pages 68-75 ~
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.