Ancient Greek medicine offered a rationalistic, analytical and structured diagnostic approach to healing which was based on four archetypal elements; earth, air, fire and water. These elements were part of the patient's natural environment, the macrocosmos, and for aspects related to the human body, the microcosmos as well. The four elements were intertwined with what was the called the four humors, which were designated as black bile, red bile which is a blood, yellow bile and white bile of limb. Another approach used by the Greeks to describe the various states of health and disease were warm versus cold, dry versus moist and so on. From this point on, physicians had the ability to determine in herbs activity, not only based on empirical experience but also through a careful examination of the herbs qualities as they're related to the balance or imbalance between the four elements and humors of the individual patient. At this time in history, rationalism was replacing intuition and the structure diagnosis was expected in the end to lead to specify therapeutic indication. Greek medicine introduced hundreds of medicinal herbs which were indigenous to the Mediterranean and was followed by the more western schools of Roman and European medicine, which introduced additional European herbs for the treatment of disease. By the seventh century AD, a new religion, Islam, began to emerge from the Arabian Desert spreading from Spain to Central and Eastern Asia. It was during the Middle Ages that the Islamic school of medicine emerged as the most advanced of its time, integrating the medical knowledge of the Greeks with the medicinal wisdom of ancient Turkey, Persia, India, and China. As a result, Islamic medicine introduced more than 100 new medicinal herbal preparations which will comprised of spices, herbs, perfumes, precious stones and other ingredients which had been imported by the Arab merchants travelling from the East. This Greco Islamic school of medicine which had undergone further adaptations by Arab physicians served as the core of traditional Middle Eastern herbal medicine practice. The rich texture of Islamic and Arabic medicine continued to evolve over the century starting from the prophetic medicine, Tibb al-Nabawi, as it related to the prophet Muhammad's rulings on health issues. One of the most prestigious of the Islamic physicians was the Persian physician, Ibn Sina or Avicenna. Ibn Sina lived between the 10th and 11th centuries and was credited with writing the two most pivotal books of Islamic medicine; The Canon of Medicine and The Book of Healing. In the next interviews, I asked Professor Efraim Lev and Professor Bashar Saad to discuss the roots of Islamic and Arab medicine with an emphasis on understanding the influence of Western and Eastern medical schools on the Greco-Arab Physician. Professor Bashar Saad is a leading traditional Arab and Islamic Medicine researcher and the president of the Al-Qasemi Academy, Baqa El-Gharbia, Israel. Actually, when we start, we have three different terms or two different terms, Arabic medicine, Islamic medicine, Arabic Islamic medicine or Greco, Arab and Islamic medicine. All these things are the same, they do refer to the same things, one type of medical system, the Greco, Arab and Islamic medicine. I will start with the Greco. Why Greco? Greco was there because this medical system started in the Middle Ages and during the Golden Age of the Arab Islamic medicine by civilization from the seventh century up to the 15th century, which covered a very large geographic area from the border of China to the Spain, and then the Russias are there. It's included the hundreds of different nationalities, different kinds of peoples, all this kinds. The first step of this medical system started with the translation, translation of all existing manuscript from the Greek. That's why we speak about Greek, this is the roots of the Greek, the scripts of Galen and the scripts of [inaudible] were translated. When you speak about Arabs, Arabs that mean at that times and we have that, we will come to this time again, included the Jewish, Christians, and Muslims. When we speak about Arab, that mean we have three different religions, the Muslims, and Christians, and the Jewish, and that's why we speak about Arabs. When we speak about Muslim, we speak about different nationalities, about Chinese, about Indian, about Persian, about Arabs, about Africans, about Arabian and all these types. That means when we speak about the terms Greco, Arab, and Islamic, we include all these people who contributed to the development of this medical system. This medical system, as I said, started in the seventh century by translation, and later on by the including of the Arab innovations, Arab-Islamic innovations. These are the major famous figures in this type of medicine, these are Avicenna, Rhasis, Antaki. They are Muslims because they are not Arab. They are Muslim, most of them are from Persian and come to Baghdad and establish their medical system. This medical system is continue up to 15th century, and manuscripts or the books of Rhasis, the manuscripts of Avicenna where they continue to be the main textbook of all type in most of the European Universities after the 17th century. That's mean the Arab Islamic medicine or Greco-Arabic medicine built also the basis for the building of the new medical system that boosted medical system. Professor of Efraim Lev provides an historical perspective of the significant role that Arab medicine was to play in the region. At the Roman period, we have a very innovative and very good kind of medicine, and this was the medicine that the Arab absorbed. Okay. The Arabs collected medical books while they were conquering the ancient world. They were translating them, and around the ninth century, they started to produce a new knowledge. So, the Arabic medicine, you can say, is a Greco-Roman medicine that was improved by the Arabs with elements of Persian medicine and mainly elements from the Indian medicine. The Ayurveda. The Ayurveda. Yeah. So, eventually, the Indian medicine affected the Arabic medicine mainly by the medicinal substances. We know about 100 new medicinal substances that were inserted into the Arabic medicine, and they were brought from India, Sri Lanka, and even China.
