The Greek Medical Legacy
Perhaps the first surgical operation performed on man, and the first use of anesthesia in the history of mankind are contained in Genesis II: 21: “ And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and the slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof.
The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, written as early as 2250 BC, represents the first documented reference to surgery in the history of mankind; it states the reckless surgery must be punished by cutting off the surgeon’s hand in retaliation. It is inconceivable that any surgeon could perform operations in such a hostile environment. Egyptians were shown performing the operations of circumcision, castration, wound and abscess surgery and limb amputation. Unfortunately, their knowledge of body structures and abdominal contents was rudimentary in spite of their interest in embalming.
The Greeks made valuable contributions to anatomy, but they did not dissect the human body because their religion was even more hostile than the Egyptians towards any interference with the bodies of the dead. The great Greek physician of Pergamon, Galen, who lived in the second century after Christ (131-201), derived his knowledge of anatomy from the pig, the ape, the dog and the ox. He assumed that the structures he found in these animals were identical with the structures in the human body. For many centuries, the human breastbone was supposed to be segmented like that of an ape; and the liver to be derived into many lobes like that of a hog; the uterus was supposed to be in two long horns as in the dog; and the hip bones to be flared as in the ox. Galen also believed in small invisible pores between the ventricles of the heart. Galen’s authority forced generations of doctors to apply his knowledge of animal anatomy to human beings. When the seats of learning fell into hands of the Church, his writings became like Gospels, and bore the stamp of the Church’s authority and infallibility. Galen’s work maintained its hold upon the clerics and physicians of the Middle Ages until Arabs and Muslims, through observations and cadaveric dissection, reviewed the human anatomy as we know it now. Vesalius thereafter, through his Arabic teaching and education, popularized their observations with his own in his famous book on the structure of human body.
In 431 AD, when Nestorius, a patriach of Byzantium, was banished for heresy, he fled to Southeast Persia were he and his followers founded a school. For two centuries, the Nestorian Christians preserved and translated Greek manuscripts (including those of Aristotle and Hippocrates) into the Syriac language.
A medical school had been founded in Gondeshapur (now Shahabad) in pre-Islamic times and the tradition of doctors of Gondeshapur was to be revived again some generations later under the Caliphs’ imagination, to the extent that Muslims were persuaded in AD 830 (by the Romans) to halt their military campaign if expansion in return for acquisition of Greek books kept in Byzantium in underground tunnels.
The famous Arabic doctors of the time, at the specific request of successive Caliphs in Baghdad in the eight and ninth centuries, undertook the heavy commitment of translating Greek medical books and the Syria versions of Greek books into the Arabic language on an unprecedented scale. Caliph Al-Mamoon ordered a School of Translation to be attached to the Academy of Baghdad – Baytul Hikma (the House of Wisdom) and appointed Hunayn Ibn Is’haq Al Ibadi (808-73) as its head. The latter, for instance, translated Galen’s books. ‘ On Anatomical Procedures’, of which the original Greek books IX to XV inclusive were totally lost, ‘On Examinations by which the Best Physicians are Recognized ‘ and the Best Physicians is a Philosopher’. Ironically, many of the original Greek books were lost, and it was the Arabic versions which h preserved the Greeks ‘medical knowledge.
