Showcase E: Early Arab Surgery

The early Arabs were the bridge between the East
(mainly India and China) and West, being involvedin many scientific and medical advances. Below is
the Al Tasrif (Book of Practice) by Abulcasis (Abdulal-Qasim al-Zahrawi), manuscript (facsimile) from
Spain or Provence, mid-15th century.
Abulcasis (936–1013) was the major Muslim writer
on surgery, greatly influencing the Christian West.
This was a medical encyclopedia of 30 treatises,
deriving mainly from Greek sources, to which he
added his 50 years of experience as a practitioner.
Shemtov Ben Isaac of Tortosa, a Sephardic
physician who lived in Marseilles, translated this
work into Hebrew in 1258. It included obstetrics,
pharmacology, dietetics, pediatrics, surgery and
even psychology. The last script was devoted to
surgical instruments (scissors, scalpels, forceps,
lancets, etc.), describing and illustrating their
uses (small, limited procedures), structural details
and also manufacturing. The drawings are typical
of early Arabic, Latin and Hebrew manuscripts.
Bibliothèque National de France, Paris.