Kitab Al-I'tibar - Medical Practices

Medical Practices

Usāmah gives us details of medical practices by mentioning medical cures he has witnessed. For example someone who had lost his speech because of dust in his throat from sifting. He was given vinegar by a physician and cured:

He drank it and took his seat for an instant, after which he felt nauseated and began to vomit clay in abundance, mixed with the vinegar that he had drunk. Consequently his throat became open again and his speech normal.

Another example is when Usāmah is suffering from a cold; he is given an Indian melon which cures him: 'no sooner had I finished eating it than I began to perspire and the cold which I felt disappeared'.

Arab doctors were also good at bone setting, as well as stitching, Usāmah describes one man whose face was struck with a sword which:

Cut through his eyebrow, eyelid, cheek, nose and upper lip, making the whole side of his face hang down on his chest. ..his face was stitched and his cut was treated until he was healed and returned to his former condition.

Usāmah is often quoted out to context to "prove" Arab medicine as superior to that of the Franks in his time. He gives an example of the difference between Thabit, a Christian physician sent by Usāmah's uncle with that of a Frankish physician. Thabit describes his method of treatment:

"They brought before me a knight in whose leg an abscess had grown; and a woman afflicted with imbecility .To the knight I applied a small poultice until the abscess opened and became well; and the woman I put on a diet and made her humour wet."

In contrast, the Frankish physician amputated the knight's leg causing him to die on the spot, and to the woman, he diagnosed that she had been possessed by a devil and made an incision in her skull which also killed the woman.

However, Usāmah also describes examples of successful Frankish medicine. He describes the treatment given to a knight by a Frankish physician:

A horse kicked him in the leg, which was subsequently infected and which opened in fourteen different places. Every time one of these cuts would close in one place, another would open in another place...Then came to him a Frankish physician and removed from the leg all the ointments which were on it and began to wash it with very strong vinegar. By this treatment all the cuts were healed and the man became well again

He gives another example of a boy whose neck was affected with scrofula. A Frank noticed the boy and advised the boy’s father on how to cure him:

Take uncrushed leaves of glasswort, burn them, then soak the ashes in olive oil and sharp vinegar. Treat the scrofula with them until the spot on which it is growing is eaten up. Then take burnt lead, soak it in ghee butter and treat him with it. That will cure him. The father treated the boy accordingly, and the boy was cured. The sores closed and the boy returned to his normal condition of health. I have myself treated with this medicine many who were afflicted with such disease, and the treatment was successful in removing the cause of the complaint.

Interestingly, Usamah is quoting his uncle, who is quoting said Tabith, on the example of fatal frankish practices, whereas he himself has positive experience with, been taught, and recommends frankish medicinal practices. Also interesting is the fact that death following an amputation due to an abscess is the same treatment, and fate, suffered by the Ayyubid Sultan as-Salih Ayyub in 1249, miles from any frankish physician.