Ibn Sina (Avicenna)

by Meam Wye on September 13, 2009

Ibn Sina was a tenth century Muslim scientist who had made major contributions in many diverse areas - from Medicine, Psychology and Pharmacology to Geology, Astronomy,Physics, Chemistry and Philosophy ... a true polymath! The lunar crater ‘Avicenna’ and the mountain peak ‘Ibn Sina Peak’ are named in his honor.

This is the first post in the series where highlights of major contributions of individual scientists are provided. I'm thankful to  Tricia  who had shown interest and suggested that details should also be provided.

The following contributions are only the ones that Historians have been  able to find from Ibn Sina's  240 surviving books out of a total of 450 books written by him. To find more about the causes of destruction of many great works please read the post 'Pubic Libraries in the Medieval Islamic World ' .





Full Name:  Abu Ali al-Ḥusayn ibn Abd Allah ibn Sina

Latin Name: Avicenna

Period:  980 - 1037CE

Areas of Contributions:  Medicine, Pharmacology, Philosophy, Chemistry, Astronomy, Music, Physics, Geology, Psychology, Poetry and Engineering

Total Number of Books:  450

Most Famous Books:

1. 'Al-Qanun fi’l-tibb' - The Canon of Medicine (14 volume medical encyclopedia with over one million words!)
   
2. 'Kitab al-Shifa' - The Book of Cure  or The Book of Completion (scientific and philosophical encyclopedia)
3. 'Fi aqsam al-ulum al-'aqliyyah' -Classification of the Rational Sciences
   

Regarded as:    Father of Modern Medicine. Father of Clinical Pharmacology and Father of Geology due to his founding contributions in these areas.

MEDICINE:

1. Separation of medicine from pharmacology
   
2. Discovery of sexually transmitted diseases
   
3. First detailed description of skin problems, perversions and nervous ailments
   
4. Introduction of systematic experimentation and quantification into the study of physiology
5. First description of Meningitis
6. First known treatment of cancer. Discovery of cancer as a tumor. Related Post 
7. Discovery of the causes of bleeding and hemorrhage
8. First descriptions of bacteria and viral organisms
   
9. Description of working of heart as a valve
   
10. First diagrams of the cranial sutures
    
11. Discovered that madness is a disorder of reason with its origin in the middle part of the brain (unlike Medieval physicians in Europe who believed that Demonic Possession  was the explanation for the mental illnesses and as such as late as till 18th century mentally ill patients were subjected to many tortuous inhuman treatments that included whipping,bloodletting and starvation. Related post )
12. Introduction of quarantine for contagious diseases
13. Identification of tuberculosis and phthisis as contagious
    
14. First description of the surgical procedure of intubation
    
15. Distinguished anatomy from medicine
    
16. Discovered the cerebellar vermis and the caudate nucleus (Neuroanatomy)
    
17. Gave correct descriptions, for the first time, on the physiology of eye movements, conjuctive sclera, cornea, choroid, optic nerves, iris, and central and peripheral facial paralyses - still used in modern Opthomology
    
18. Discovery of the healing property of gaseous mercury
    
19. First correct explanation of pulsation 
20. Put forward new methods for hepatitis treatment
    
21. Provided a number of new methods for Inhalation and Oral anesthesia. Related Post
    
22. First explained the distribution of diseases by water and soil
    
23. Diagnosis of  diseases using only the methods of feeling the pulse and observing inhalation
    
24. Described diabetes insipidus very precisely for the first time
    
25. Provided the distinction of mediastinitis from pleurisyo .
    

PHARMACOLOGY:

1. Laid down the principles for testing the effectiveness of new drugs and medications that form the basis of clinical pharmacology, clinical trials, randomized controlled trials and efficacy tests.
   
2. The Canon lists 760 tested drugs describing their pharmaceutical actions and properties. Many were his own contributions while for the rest he gave credit where due.
   

PSYCHOLOGY:

1. Pioneer of neuropsychiatry. First described the neuropsychiatric conditions of hallucination, insomnia, mania, rabies, nightmare, melancholia, dementia, epilepsy, paralysis, stroke, vertigo and tremor and provided treatment methods
   
2. Described melancholia (depression) as a type of mood disorder in which the person may become suspicious and develop certain types of phobias
   
3. Developed a system for associating changes in the pulse rate with inner feelings
   

GEOLOGY

:

1. First to emphasize the role of sedimentary and erosive phenomena in the formation of mountains
   
2. First to present the fundamental principles of Geology that later became known in Europe as ‘Doctrine of Uniformitarianism’,’ law of superposition of strata’ and ‘Concept of Catastrophism’

ASTRONOMY:

1. Criticized Aristotle's view of the stars receiving their light from the Sun. Ibn Sina stated that the stars are self-luminous
   
2. Concluded that Venus is closer to the Earth than the Sun
   
3. Solved the equant problem in the Ptolemaic model
   

PHYSICS:

1. Developed a detailed theory of motion. The concept of inertia put forward in this theory was consistent to that given by Isaac Newton about seven centuries later in his famous first law of motion
   
2. Considered pioneer in putting forward the concept of momentum that is part of  Newton’s second law of motion.
   
3. Invented air thermometer to measure the relative hotness and coldness of dry air
   
4. Stated that if the perception of light is due to the emission of some sort of particles by a luminous source, the speed of light must be finite
   

CHEMISTRY:

1. Invention of steam distillation
   
2. Invention of refrigerated coil
   
3. One of the first to refute alchemy. Four of his works on this subject were translated into Latin
   

PHILOSOPHY:

1. Wrote more than 150 treatises on Philosophy
   
2. Founder of ‘Avicennism’ – a school of thought of Islamic Philosophy that had an influence on later European Philosophers including William of Auvergne, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. In Paris, however, Avicennism was proscribed in the early thirteenth century.
   
3. Developed an early theory on ‘hypothetical syllogism’
   
4. Developed an original theory on temporal modal syllogism
   
5. Developed an early theory on ‘propositional calculus’
   
6. First to describe the methods of ‘agreement, difference and concomitant variation’ that are part of Mill’s methods.
   
7. Wrote the first criticisms of ‘Aristotelian logic’
   
8. Wrote a number of treatises on Islamic theology in which he gave scientific and philosophical interpretations of Quran

MUSIC:

1. Belived that music had both  physical as well as psychological effect on patients
   
2. Followed Al-Kindi in classification of Music as a branch of Mathematics. Translated title of his book on Music is, therefore, ‘Chapter three of the mathematical sciences which is on the science of music’.
   
3. Observed that in the series of consonances represented by (n + 1)/n, the ear is unable to distinguish them when n = 45
   

ENGINEERING:

1. First to classify five constituent simple machines - lever, pulley, screw, wedge, and windlass - and their combinations
   
2. First correct description of 'Mechanism'

POETRY:

Various verses written by him are present in many of his works. These are written in Arabic as well as in persian.

OTHERS: 

Ibn Sina had memorized the Qur'an by the age of seven.

The historian George Sarton, who is regarded as 'Father of History of Science', wrote in his famous work 'Introduction to the History of Science:

"One of the most famous exponents of Muslim universalism and an eminent figure in Islamic learning was Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna (981-1037). For a thousand years he has retained his original renown as one of the greatest thinkers and medical scholars in history."