In an interview on Science and Islam

Now tell us about Peter Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith’s Medieval Islamic Medicine.

This book looks at the development of medicine within the Islamic world, a well-developed area of scientific activity. For example, how it intersects with popular or folk medicine of various kinds, such as prophetic medicine – religious sayings or medico-religious sayings which are attributed to the Prophet. It’s a socio-cultural look at medicine. Hospitals developed in the Middle East in the 10th century and they knew about Hippocrates and the Hippocratic oath. The Nestorian Christians were often prominent physicians in the Islamic state under the Muslim caliphs and were instrumental in establishing these hospitals. They had wards for men and women, and children’s wards; they had lunatic asylums where they used quite modern therapies, such as music therapy. They were working on the Greek Hippocratic theory of the humours: yellow bile, blood, black bile and phlegm. So if somebody is ill their humours are out of balance. The first psychiatric hospital was built in medieval Cairo.

The origin for all these medical advancements came directly from the Prophet. The Koran says, ‘For every disease, Allah has given a cure.’ It was this belief that there is a cure for every disease that encouraged early Muslims to engage in biomedical research. The Qalawun Hospital in Cairo could care for 8,000 patients, with a staff that included physicians, pharmacists, and nurses. There were even research facilities that discovered, for example, the contagious nature of diseases, and research into optics and the mechanisms of the eye. Muslim doctors were removing cataracts with hollow needles over 1,000 years before Western physicians.