Works
Abū al-Qāsim was a court physician to the Andalusian caliph Al-Hakam II. He devoted his entire life and genius to the advancement of medicine as a whole and surgery in particular. His best work was the Kitab al-Tasrif, discussed below.
Abū al-Qāsim specialized in curing disease by cauterization. He invented several devices used during surgery, for purposes such as inspection of the interior of the urethra, applying and removing foreign bodies from the throat, inspection of the ear, etc. He is also credited to be the first to describe ectopic pregnancy in 963, in those days a fatal affliction.
Al-Zahrawi was the first to illustrate the various cannulae and the first to treat a wart with an iron tube and caustic metal as a boring instrument. He was also the first to draw hooks with a double tip for use in surgery.
Read more about this topic: Abu Al-Qasim Al-Zahrawi
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“The subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one tell whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his pick?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“They commonly celebrate those beaches only which have a hotel on them, not those which have a humane house alone. But I wished to see that seashore where man’s works are wrecks; to put up at the true Atlantic House, where the ocean is land-lord as well as sea-lord, and comes ashore without a wharf for the landing; where the crumbling land is the only invalid, or at best is but dry land, and that is all you can say of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)