ýIslamset - Medical Philosophy in Islam: INTRODUCTIONý

INTRODUCTION

Medicine is standing at its crossroads today. With ever increasing technological progress and scientific discoveries, the art of healing has been transformed to a highly specialized one, utilizing sophisticated machinery linked to that marvel of the electronic age, the computer. Decisions are now based on computer printouts of metabolic processes resulting in the doctor becoming part of the robotic process himself, becoming dehumanized to the extent that he comes to rely on miracle drugs and wonder machines and becoming oblivious of the Supreme Healer, the Creator and Sustainer of all life, Allah, the Beneficent and the Merciful.

In ever increasing numbers Muslim students from all over the world are imbibing medical knowledge at the fount of Western universities and Medical Schools, and then returning home to practice their respective arts, having sworn and dedicated themselves to uphold the glorified principles of the Hippocratic Oath, little realizing that the Oath is taken in the name of the mythical gods of Ancient Hellenism, and is sacrilegious to Islamic beliefs. They are not to be faulted for having lost sight of their great heritage, extending into all the disciplines of science, including the practice of medicine, for they are the products of academicians and universities geared to denigrate the contribution of Islam and the Quran to the entire human endeavour.

Muslim doctors in particular have been ignorant of the significant contribution rendered by the Quran and the Sunnah to the development of Medical sciences and very few are aware of the tomes of Arabic medical literature lying dormant in museums and libraries which contain ideas and knowledge on every conceivable field of medicine, from bacteriology, surgery, physiology, immunology, psychology, psychiatry and even to obstetrics and gynecology and ophthalmology, which are not only valid today, but in some cases far in advance of contemporary concepts held in the West.

Latest trends in medical thinking is the implication of diet in the causation of disease, a principle enshrined in the six principles of Prophetic Medicine fifteen centuries ago!

Concerning the Quranic imperatives, Imam Abi Abdullah Muhammad bin Ahmad az-Zahabi (643-748. C.E) with regard to food as a cause of disease, states that the Quran in Surah al-A'raf verse 31 has summarized the entire medicine in half an ayat:

0! Children of Adam, clothe yourselves decently at the Mosques, and eat and drink, but not in excess...' (VII: 31)

This is affirmed in the numerous Hadith which refer to the stomach as a tank (Hawd) of disease, and where it is enjoined that the stomach should be divided into thirds, each containing air, water and solids in equal proportions, and implying further that one should not eat to satiation! It is an undisputed fact that overeating or overindulgence results in various diseases, and imbalances between the diverse constituents of food in the nature of proteins, fats and carbohydrates also predisposes to diverse illnesses. In the less affluent, underrating (malnutrition), accounts for the death of three children every hour in the continent of Africa, whilst in an affluent country like South Africa, with plentiful supply of food, the mortality rate amongst us from heart attacks is the highest in the world More recently, an imbalance of fats in the diet has been implicated in the causation of cancer of the ovaries and breast in women. These facts lend support to the argument that most of disease is iatrogenic, i.e. caused by man himself, in not obeying the Quranic injunctions concerning food and healthy living.

This present work is, therefore, both salient and significant in that it draws- attention to the great contribution which Islamic Medicine has to offer to contemporary knowledge, and it points out the very vital and dynamic role played in medical history by the Arabs.

Their discoveries covered such fields as surgery, where the principles of suturing and wound treatment are still valid today, especially with reference to the treatment of war wounds. It is indeed ironical that Israel utilizes these principles on the battlefield in recent times whilst present day Muslim soldiers were denied these life-saving techniques!

Many of the Arab discoveries were surreptitiously copied by the Medieval philosophers, Roger Bacon's doctoral thesis on Optics is a classic example of plagiarism from the Arabs, whilst Ibn-Nafees' work on the pulmonary circulation was two centuries earlier than Harvey who is credited with it in the West. In the search of drugs, again arising from the Quranic description in Surah an-Naql (The Bee): "There issues from within their abdomens a drink of various hues wherein is healing for mankind..." (16:69). It was realized that different plants and flowers yield different varieties of honey. The search for these plants gave rise to the systematic study of botany and pharmacology. Muslims had discovered the use of alcohol as a drug and vehicle, and for anesthesia when they performed delicate operations of the eye, cystoscopy for the removal of kidney stones, and treatment for gonorrheal strictures which is still in use today. Vaccinations for smallpox was first introduced in Turkey and attributed in the West much later to Pasteur, and Muslims had an awareness of epidemics and their causes, as well as of bacteria long before Europe. They were the first to establish hospitals as we know them today, and for having separate wards for the different diseases. They also formed medical associations and had clinical meetings in which cases were discussed. Medical education as we know it today, with the idea of internships was initiated by Muslims as well as the standardization of drugs and price control.

This book ably proves that Muslims were never imitators as the West claims them to be, but innovators and initiators par excellence. The lesson to be derived from this is that contemporary students should be proud of their heritage and the work is a plea for more active participation by members of the medical profession who have been blessed with half of what constitutes knowledge according to the Sunna:

Knowledge is of two kinds, knowledge of the body and knowledge of Deen. It is possible to fulfill the latter half of this requirement by consolidated effort through the Islamic Medical Association, in order to render and practice holistic medicine, in the realization that Medical practice is not a vocation but an act of 'Ibadah with a responsibility one's Creator and His creation. Like any other act of 'Ibadah the art of Medicine, as a ritual, can and should be practiced in toto, paying full attention to all its requirements. This book is the first step to that performance.

Dr.G.M. Karim

1. az-Zahabi. Imam. Tibb an- Nabawi. Cairo Reprint 1961. p. 8
2. Ibid