Arabian medicine : being the Fitzpatrick lectures delivered at the College of physicians in November 1919 and November 1920 / by Edward G. Browne.

  • Browne, Edward Granville, 1862-1926.
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Arabian medicine : being the Fitzpatrick lectures delivered at the College of physicians in November 1919 and November 1920 / by Edward G. Browne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of the seventh century of our era, but it was not till the latter half of the eighth century, when Baghdad became the metropolis of Islam, that its influence began to be widely exerted on the Muslims. It was in the year a.d. 7651 that the second ‘Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur, being afflicted with an illness which baffled his medical advisers, summoned to attend him Jurjis the son of Bukht-Yishu4 (a half-Persian, half-Syriac name, meaning “Jesus hath delivered ”)2, the chief physician of the great hospital of Jundi-Shapiir. Four years later Jurjis fell ill and craved permission to return home, to see his family and children, and, should he die, to be buried with his fathers. The Caliph invited him to embrace the religion of Islam, but Jurjis replied that he preferred to be with his fathers, whether in heaven or hell. Thereat the Caliph laughed and said, “Since I saw thee I have found relief from the maladies to which I had been ac¬ customed,” and he dismissed him with a gift of 10,000 dindrs, and sent with him on his journey an attendant who should convey him, living or dead, to Jundi-Shapur, the “Civitas Hippocratica” which he loved so well. Jurjis on his part promised to send to Baghdad to replace him one of his pupils named ‘Isa ibn Shahla, but declined to send his son, Bukht-Yishu4 the second, on the ground that he could not be spared from the Bimdristan, or hospital, of Jundi-Shdpur. For six generations and over 250 years the Bukht- Yishu4 family remained pre-eminent in medicine, the last (Jibra’il son of ‘Ubaydu’llah son of Bukht-Yishu4 son of Jibrail son of Bukht-Yishu4 son of Jurjis son of 1 Al-Qiftfs Totrikhu?l-Hukama, p. 158. 2 The explanation of these old Persian names beginning or ending with -bukht we owe to Professor Th. Noldeke, Gesch. d. Artakhshir- i-Pdpakan, p. 49, n. 4.