Abu ‘Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina is better known in Europe by the Latinized name “Avicenna.” He is probably the most significant philosopher in the Islamic tradition and arguably the most influential philosopher of the pre-modern era.
He was a Persian polymath who is regarded as one of the most significant thinkers and writers of the Islamic Golden Age. Of the 450 works he is known to have written, around 240 have survived, including 150 on philosophy and 40 on medicine.
His most famous works are The Book of Healing, a philosophical and scientific encyclopedia, and The Canon of Medicine (al-Qanun fi’l-Tibb), a medical encyclopedia which became a standard medical text at many medieval universities and remained in use until the early modern period.
He was also a distinguished philosopher whose major summa the Cure (al-Shifa’) had a decisive impact upon European scholasticism and especially upon Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274).
Avicenna began his prodigious writing career at age 21. As mentioned, some 240 extant titles bear his name which cross numerous fields, including mathematics, geometry, astronomy, physics, alchemy, metaphysics, psychology, Islamic theology, logic, philology, music, and poetry.
According to his autobiography, Avicenna had memorized the entire Quran by the age of 10. He turned to medicine at 16, and not only learned medical theory, but also by gratuitous attendance of the sick had, according to his own account, discovered new methods of treatment. The teenager achieved full status as a qualified physician at age 18. The youthful physician’s fame spread quickly, and he treated many patients without asking for payment.
He lived a hectic life, he declined the offers by many emirs (kings) and wandered from city to city, seeking for a place to settle down in order to find an opening for his talents.
In the last ten or twelve years of his life he began to study literary matters and philology. In the last year of his life a severe colic seized him, so violent that he could scarcely stand. The disease kept returning, and with difficulty he reached Hamadan, where, finding the disease gaining ground, he refused to keep up the regimen imposed, and resigned himself to his fate. His friends advised him to slow down and take life moderately. He refused, however, stating that: “I prefer a short life with width to a narrow one with length”.
He died in June 1037, in his fifty-eighth year, and was buried in Hamadan, Iran.
Avicenna’s tomb, Hamadan, Iran.
The Canon of Medicine
Persian version of The Canon of Medicine at Avicenna’s mausoleum in Hamadan, Iran.
The Canon of Medicine (al-Qānūn fī al-Ṭibb) is an encyclopedia of medicine in five books compiled by Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and completed in 1025. It presents an overview of the contemporary medical knowledge.
The Canon of Medicine remained a medical authority for centuries. It set the standards for medicine in Medieval Europe and the Islamic world and was used as a standard medical textbook through the 18th century in Europe.
The Canon of Medicine is divided into five books:
Essays on basic medical and physiological principles, anatomy, regimen and general therapeutic procedures.
List of medical substances, arranged alphabetically, following an essay on their general properties.
Diagnosis and treatment of diseases specific to one part of the body.
Diagnosis and treatment of conditions covering multiple body parts or the entire body.
Formulary of compound remedies.
A Latin copy of the Canon of Medicine, dated 1484, located at the P.I. Nixon Medical Historical Library of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
The earliest known copy of volume 5 of the Canon of Medicine (dated 1052) is held in the collection of the Aga Khan and is to be housed in the Aga Khan Museum planned for Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The earliest printed edition of the Latin Canon appeared in 1472, but only covering book 3. Soon after, eleven complete incunables were published, followed by fourteen more Latin editions in the 16th century until 1608.
William Osler  described the Canon as “the most famous medical textbook ever written”, noting that it remained “a medical bible for a longer time than any other work.”
George Sarton  wrote in the Introduction to the History of Science:
“The Qanun is an immense encyclopedia of medicine. It contains some of the most illuminating thoughts pertaining to distinction of mediastinitis from pleurisy; contagious nature of phthisis; distribution of diseases by water and soil; careful description of skin troubles; of sexual diseases and perversions; of nervous ailments.”