A History of Muslim Pharmacy

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A History of Muslim Pharmacy

Arabic pharmacy (Saydanah) as a profession with a separate entity from medicine was recognized by the beginning of the third/ninth century. This century not only saw the founding and an increase in the number of privately owned pharmacy shops in Baghdad and its vicinity, but in other Muslim cities as well. Many of the pharmacists who managed them were skilled in the apothecary's art and quite knowledgeable in the compounding, storing, and preserving of drugs. State-sponsored hospitals also had their own dispensaries attached to manufacturing laboratories where syrups, electuaries, ointments, and other pharmaceutical preparations were prepared on a relatively large scale. The pharmacists and their shops were pericldically inspected by a government appointed official al-Muhtasib, and his aides. These officials were to check for accuracy the weights and measures as well as the purity and unadulteration of the drugs used. Such supervision was intended to prevent the use of deteriorating compounded drugs and syrups, and to safeguard the public.

This early rise and development of professional pharmacy in Islam -over four centuries before such development took place in Europe- was the result of three major occurrences: the great increase in the demand for drugs and their availability on the market; professional maturity; and the outgrowth of intellectual responsibility by qualified pharmacists.

Pharmaceutical Contributions During the Third/Ninth Century

The third/ninth century in Muslim lands witnessed the richest period thus far in literary productivity insofar as pharmacy and the healing arts were concerned. This prolific intellectual activity paved the way for still a greater harvest in the succeeding four centuries of both high and mediocre caliber authorship. For pharmacy, manuals on materia medica and for instructing the pharmacist concerning the work and management of his shop were circulating in increasing numbers. Only a few authors and their important works will be briefly discussed and evaluated.

One of the contributors to Arabic pharmacy in the third/ninth century was the Nestorian physician, Yuhanna b. Masawayh (Latin Mesue, 160-242/777-857), the son of an apothecary. In his book on aromatic simples, Ibn Masawayh lists about thirty aromatics, their physical properties methods of detecting adulteration, and pharmacological effects. On ambergris, far example, he explains that there are many types, the best among them the blue or gray (gray-amber) fatty as-salahiti is Used mixed with the choicest of aromated mixtures (ghaliyyahs, perfumes, or medical cosmetics), and in geriatric electuaries. Only vaguely did Ibn Masawayh know that the ambergris is affected from certain seafish (a concreation from the intestinal tract of the sperm whale, physeteridae found in tropical seas or on the
shores).

Of camphor, he reports, with some uncertainty, that it originates in China and that the wood and the crystalline substance was brought to Arab lands by trade through India. This substance was extensively used in Arabic medical therapy. Ibn Masawayh also recommended saffron for liver and stomach ailments. He noted that sandalwood, whether yellow (the best), white, or red is brought from India where it is used in the manufacture of perfumes. In Islam it entered pharmaceutical preparations as early as the second/eighth century, if not earlier. It soon thereafter became associated with the profession: hence the pharmacist 'was called as-saydanani or as-saydalani (he who sells or deals with sandalwood), and savdanah for pharmacy.

In his medical axioms, Ibn Masawayh recommended the use of only a few well known medicinal plants which should be utilized with the aim of building up a natural resistance to diseases. He urged physicians to prescribe one remedy for each disease, using empirical and analogous reasoning. He finally stated that the physician who could cure by using only diet without drugs, was the most successful and lucky.

Ibn Masawayh's book al-Mushajjar al-Kabir is, to some extent, a tabulated medical encyclopedia on diseases and their treatment by drugs and diet. This is in contrast with his other small treatises such as those on barley water, how to prepare it and its therapeutic uses; on dentifrices; and on the amelioration of purgative drugs.

A countryman and a younger colleague of Ibn Masawayh was Abu Hasan 'Ali b. Sahl Rabban at- Tabari who was born in 192/808. At about thirty years of age, he was summoned to Samarra by caliph al-Mu'tasim (217-227/833-842), where he served as a statesman and a physician. At-Tabari wrote several medical books, the most famous of which is his Paradise of Wisdom, completed in 235/850 (a Syriac version of it was simultaneously prepared by the author). contains discussions on the nature of man, cosmology, embryology, tempera-ments, psychotherapy, hygiene, diet, and diseases -acute and chronic -and their treatment, medical anecdotes, and abstracts and quotations from Indian source material. In addition, the book contains several chapters on materia medica, cereals, diets, utilities and therapeutic uses of animal and bird organs, and of drugs and methods of their preparation.

At- Tabari urged that the therapeutic value of each drug be utilized in accordance with the particular case, and the practitioner should always choose the best of simples. He explained that the finest types of simples come from various places: black myrobalan comes from Kabul; clover dodder from Crete; aloes from Socotra; and aromatic spices from India. He was also precise in describing his therapeutics. He said, 'I have tried a very useful remedy for swelling of the stomach; the juices of the liverwort (water hemp) and the absinthium after being boiled on fire and strained to be taken for several days. Also powdered seeds of celery (marsh parsley) mixed with giant fennel made into troches and taken with a suitable liquid release the wind in the stomach, joints and back (arthritis). To strengthen the stomach and to insure good health he prescribed 'black myrobalan powdered in butter, mixed with dissolved plant sugar extracted from the licorice and that this remedy should be taken daily.' For storage purposes he recommended glass or ceramic vessels for liquid (wet) drugs; special small jars for eye liquid salves; lead containers for fatty substances. For the treatment of ulcerated wounds, he prescribed an ointment made of juniper-gum, fat, butter, and pitch. In addition, he warned that one mithqal (about 4 grams) of opium or henbane causes sleep and also death.

The first medical formulary to be written in Arabic is al-Aqrabadhin tly Sabur b. Sahl (d. 255/869). In it, he gave medical recipes stating the methods and techniques of compounding these remedies, their pharmacological actions, the dosages given of :cc each, and the means of administration. The formulas are organized in accordance with their types of preparations into which they fit, Whether tablets, powders, ointments, electuaries or syrups. Each class of pharmaceutical preparation is represented along with a variety of recipes made in a specific form; they vary, however, in the ingredients used and their recommended uses and therapeutic effects. Many of these recipes and their pharmaceutical forms are remindful of similar formulas given in ancient documents from the Middle East and the Greco-Roman civilizations. What is unique is the organization of Sabur's formulary-type compendium purposely written as a guidebook for pharmacists, whether in their .Own private drugstores or in hospital pharmacies.

A few books related to pharmacy were written by the famous Muslim scholar Ya'qub b. Ishaq al-Kindi (Philosopher of the Arabs, d. 260/874). His contributions to philosophy, mathematics and astrology, however, were greater than those on medicine and therapy. Nevertheless it is to his credit that he was an outspoken critic of alchemists and attacked their procedures and claims as deceptive under the circumstances.

Hunayn's book of the Ten Treatises on the Eye was completed in 245/860. After finishing the nine treatise the author felt the need for a closing treatise to be devoted to compounded drugs for eye medication. He extracted some recipes from earlier treatises and added more prescriptions recommended by Greek authors. In this tenth treatise, compounded eye remedies were divided into four types:

  1. A kneaded soft mass (mess) in which dry ingredients are pounded, then mixed (blended) with water, a little at a time. This produced a dough-like eye paste (or ointment).
  2. Cory eye powders (kuhls) were used to sharpen vision, and prevent eye itching, Corneal opacities, pterygium and roughness. These powders included such simples as burnt vitriol, verdigris, vitriol, sarcocol, aloes horned poPpy, antimony, and Scoria of silver.
  3. Wet (liquid) eye salves or collyria were useful against trachoma and dimness of vision. They were prepared from such substances as honey, olive oil anointing extract (duhn) of balsam asafetida and fennel.
  4. Eye compresses or poultices (plaster) which were bandaged Over the eye and medications were made of such simples as mill dust powdered frankincense, argil, myrrh, gum Arabic and opium mixed with egg white. The text included ill over 44 recipes in which Hunayn described methods of preparations, techniques ill employed, vehicles and solvents used, the doses of ingredients in the mixtures and the therapy .
As one obvious example of the uses and therapeutic values of using compounded drugs, Hunayn gave that of the theriac, the universal antidote against poisoning Hunayn, who knew Greek, defined the Greek word theriake as an animal that bite or snaps. Since these antidotes were used against animal bites the word eventually was applied to all antidotes, especially when snake flesh was incorporated. The Arabs, in a distorted transliteration of the Greek work, called this Tiryaq; hence the Latin theriaca. The originator of the theriac was the Greek sage Magnus. It was then perfected by Andromachus in the first century. In the second century, it was revised by Galen who made known its action and effectiveness and the manner in which it should be used.

Concerning Galen's Phenix, which comprises two treatises (one on medicine, and the other on books of philosophy, logic and rhetoric) Hunayn explained that it was translated first into syriac by Ayyub ar-Ruhawi al-Abrash in the early third/ninth century, then by himself to Dawud, the physician. He added to it other books not mentioned by Galen. Later, Hunayn translated it into Arabic for his patron, Abu ja'far Muhammad b. Musa. Also for his brother, Abu al-Hasan Ahmad b. Musa, Hunayn translated, Galen's treatise on the arrangement (classification for readers) of his books (maratib kutubih), as they were known among Muslim authors ever since.

Hunayn corrected the translation into Arabic of the major part of Dioscorides', Materia Medica, undertaken by his associate Istifan b. Basil (about mid third/ninth century) in Baghdad. Due to the influence of this work, several books of materia medica were written in Arabic. Dioscorides definitely influenced the writing and direction of sabur's formulary, which has been mentioned earlier. Dioscorides in his Herbal emphasized the need to know better the crude drugs from the three natural , kingdoms, as well as an intelligent choice of the best simples suited for the com. pounding of medical recipes. His Herbal treatise established the basis for Arabic pharmacology, therapy, and medical botany. It also provided a description of the physical properties of drugs, types, and organoleptic means of testing their purity, and usefulness. As a result, Arabic pharmac: and pharmacognosy advanced beyond the Greco-Roman contribution. In turn, this helped and influenced a similar development in Europe through the Renalssance.
 
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