Medicine, Traditional — West Asia | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

West Asia was (and still is) a heterogeneous area in terms of topography, climate, and culture, which perhaps explains its pluralism—even syncretism—in the area of traditional medicine, on both the intellectual and practical levels. Since the middle of the seventh century CE, West Asia has been predominantly Muslim, although Anatolia, or Asia Minor, became Muslim only during the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. However, many non-Muslims—various Christian sects, Jews, Zoroastrians, and others—have kept their original faiths. Because medicine is always associated with beliefs about God, nature, and human beings' place in the world, it is imbued with religious, cultural, and social values, and these values may differ for people of different faiths.

Since the end of the eighteenth century, major political and socioeconomic transformations have affected health care in Western Asia, and traditional medicine now occupies only a peripheral position. In the past, however, there were three main medical traditions in West Asia, each of which explained the nature of health, the causes of illness, the remedies and other curing techniques used by healers, and the proper care for sick people according to its own worldview. These three major systems were humoralistic medicine, popular or folkloristic medicine, and religious medicine.

Humoralistic medicine was the tradition that Muslim societies inherited from the past, particularly from the Greek physicians Hippocrates, the father of medicine (c. 460–c. 377 BCE), and Galen (129–c. 199 CE). This tradition was based in cities and princely courts, where it flourished under the patronage of rulers, high officials, and military dignitaries. Humoralism was based on the assumption that all things were composed of the four elements of fire, earth, air, and water. Each element embodied two of the four qualities of hot, cold, dry, and wet. The human body consisted of four fluids, or humors—blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile—each corresponding to one of the elements. Humoralism stressed the importance of a strict regimen suitable for each individual's lifestyle and environment.

Hence a humoral practitioner had to examine his patient closely by checking the patient's pulse, inspecting the urine, and questioning the patient about the ailment. After diagnosing the problem, the healer would probably first prescribe a suitable diet. If a medical diet did not solve the problem, the doctor would treat the patient with a pharmacopoeia, mostly with botanical ingredients. If this harsher treatment failed, the physician would choose a still harsher course—a simple surgical procedure.

Although Muslim physicians drew on this tradition, they expanded it considerably in all branches of medicine and pharmacy. A famous representative of this school was Ibn Sina (980–1037), known in Europe as Avicenna. His Qanun (or Canon of Medicine), one of his almost two hundred literary works, was a standard medical text well into the eighteenth century in Asia as well as Europe.

Popular or folkloristic medicine includes several systems of indigenous medicine practiced in West Asia for hundreds of years. Whereas other medical systems required would-be physicians to study written texts with teachers, to apprentice themselves to masters, or to teach themselves, folkloristic medicine was based on oral traditions and was usually taught via informal apprenticeship. In contrast to urban-based humoralism, popular medicine—though practiced in towns as well—was more common in the countryside. The therapeutical aspect of popular medicine includes practical knowledge about medical herbs and includes procedures that may also appear in humoralism, such as bloodletting and cauterization.

Religious medicine refers to medical theory sanctioned by religious figures. Foremost in this area is prophetic medicine (in Arabic, Tibb Nabawi), as in Muhammad's sayings that concerned medical questions. For instance, there are aphorisms of Muhammad dealing with hygiene, with the care of a sick person and his or her family, and with recipes for treatment. For Shi ʿite Muslims, the role of Muhammad as healer was less important; they invested their religious leaders (imams) with unique therapeutic skills as part of their supernatural nature and sought treatment from them.

Religious medicine also includes medical rites and practices connected with living and dead saints. Saints are often endowed with extraordinary healing powers. Religious medicine may even refer to a profound belief in the healing capacities of objects like trees, grass, stones, water, earth, tombs, oil, soil, and even saliva, urine, and the excrement of certain animals. The genre of religious medicine incorporates both magical procedures and herbal remedies familiar in humoral and folkloristic medicine as well, but unique to religious medicine is the connection of healing with religious figures, mainly dead ones.

The belief in the healing power of the saints still exists in Western Asia. Everything that comes in contact with a saint or his or her shrine may receive some of the saint's healing powers. Thus objects associated with a saint's shrine may be used for curing and protection; acts performed at a shrine may have the same beneficial effects. For instance, Palestinian Muslims believe that dates brought from Mecca cause children to speak soon and with a sweet voice.

Thus traditional West Asian medicine was decentralized; no common doctrine united all its varieties. Nevertheless there was much overlapping in theories and techniques. For example, phlebotomy (bloodletting) and cauterization (burning to destroy tissue) were popular practices among healers in all medical traditions. Cauterization was such a common technique that European travelers in the Ottoman empire commented on the phenomenon of people treating themselves, including cauterizing themselves to treat a host of problems, such as headaches, skin rashes, leprosy, abscesses, and hemorrhoids. Sometimes a practice described in humoralistic treatises was adopted into popular medicine, but after several generations in oral and popular tradition, its roots in the learned past were forgotten.

In West Asia, traditional medicine has become marginal and is not practiced in state-run medical establishments or taught in universities. Those who aspire to a career in the medical establishment, whether at the medical, scientific, or administrative level, can achieve their aim only with knowledge and practice in Western biomedicine, which originated in Europe.

Traditional medical beliefs and practices are, however, still a living tradition in West Asia, despite the dominance of Western medicine. For example, humoralism, though marginalized, has survived; a Persian medical book of the 1950s, meant for contemporary practice, was based on Avicenna. (Humoralism is however much more alive in parts of South Asia, such as India and Pakistan, where it is widely taught and practiced under the name of yunani tibb, "Greek medicine.") And throughout Turkey, bazaars sell herbs for pharmaceutical purposes (drugs and poisons), as well as condiments for cooking, scents for perfume, and dyes. Furthermore, cauterization as a medical technique can still be observed in some rural regions in Turkey and the Arab world.

And in recent decades traditional medicine has enjoyed something of a revival. Disenchantment with Western values and Western medicine and the wish to defend Muslim values against Western morality have caused people to return to traditional practices, now known as complementary or alternative medicine (CAM). CAM has even won respect from advocates of biomedicine. Some hospitals try to take measures (or claim to be doing so) toward integrating aspects of CAM into the formal establishment, for instance by introducing optional CAM treatments into Western-type medical treatment.

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