The Byzantine stream of Greek medicine had dwindled
to a very tiny rill when the fall of Constantinople
(1453) dispersed to the West many Greek scholars and
many precious manuscripts.
The third and by far the strongest branch of
the Greek river reached the West after a remarkable
and meandering course. The map before you shows
the distribution of the Graeco-Roman Christian world
at the beginning of the seventh century. You
will notice that Christianity had extended far eastwards,
almost to China. Most of those eastern Christians
were Nestorians and one of their important centres
was Edessa, whose school of learning became so celebrated.
Here in the fifth century was built one of the most
celebrated hospitals of antiquity.
Now look at another map showing the same countries
about a century later. No such phenomenal change
ever was made within so short space of time as that
which thus altered the map of Asia and Europe at this
period. Within a century, the Crescent had swept
from Arabia through the Eastern Empire, over Egypt,
North Africa and over Spain in the West, and the fate
of Western Europe hung in the balance before the gates
of Tours in 732. This time the barbaric horde
that laid waste a large part of Christendom were a
people that became deeply appreciative of all that
was best in Graeco-Roman civilization and of nothing
more than of its sciences. The cultivation of
medicine was encouraged by the Arabs in a very special
way. Anyone wishing to follow the history of the
medical profession among this remarkable people will
find it admirably presented in Lucien Leclerc’s
“Histoire de la medecine arabe” (Paris,
1876). An excellent account is also given in
Freind’s well-known “History of Medicine”
(London, 1725-1726). Here I can only indicate
very briefly the course of the stream and its freightage.
With the rise of Christianity, Alexandria became a
centre of bitter theological and political factions,
the story of which haunts the memory of anyone who
was so fortunate as to read in his youth Kingsley’s
“Hypatia.” These centuries, with their
potent influence of neoplatonism on Christianity,
appear to have been sterile enough in medicine.
I have already referred to the late Greeks, Aetius
and Alexander of Tralles. The last of the Alexandrians
was a remarkable man, Paul of AEgina, a great name
in medicine and in surgery, who lived in the early
part of the seventh century. He also, like Oribasius,
was a great compiler. In the year 640, the Arabs
took Alexandria, and for the third time a great library
was destroyed in the “first city of the West.”
Shortly after the conquest of Egypt, Greek works were
translated into Arabic, often through the medium of
Syriac, particularly certain of Galen’s books
on medicine, and chemical writings, which appear to
have laid the foundation of Arabian knowledge on this
subject.
