Canon of Medicine

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Overview

The Canon of Medicine (al-Qanun fi al-Tibb) is Ibn Sina's vast medical encyclopedia, completed in the early eleventh century. It gathers Greek, Arabic, Persian and Indian medical knowledge into one ordered system, from the nature of the body to the treatment of disease and the use of drugs. Translated into Latin in the twelfth century, it became a standard university text in Europe for several hundred years, and a form of it still shapes Unani practice in South Asia.

Context

Ibn Sina was physician to rulers in Central Asia and Persia. He inherited the medicine of Hippocrates and Galen, preserved and extended by Arabic writers such as al-Razi. The dominant framework was humoral theory, which explained health as a balance of four bodily humours. His Canon was an attempt to organise this inheritance logically.