During the the early period of Medieval Islam (601-750 A.D.), the people of major cities of the Middle East were embedded with the idea that Allah (the God of Islam) or believing the Islamic religion itself will help fulfill a good healthy life ever since their savior Muhammad made studying Islam possible in 615 A.D. It wasn't until 900 A.D. when the idea of medicine healing the body hit them. And boy did it hit them hard.
Everyone was fascinated with these new sciences and medical treatments. Many physicians, chemists, philosophers, you name it, were trying to advance medicine from the Greek times. Since many medical experiments were banned by the Romans in their territory, the Middle Easterns had to find a way to fill the many gaps about the human body and the diseases that went along with them. They started to make new medical traditions, which were heavily influenced by their Greek studies.
Many new discovers were made at this time. A physician named Al-Razi, was recognized as the "Father of Pediatrics". Not only did he write over 200 scientific books and articles, including his popular book, Diseases of Children (which was one of the first books on that topic), he made several new discoveries. He taught people that conflicts on the body like fevers, were meant to kill the infection of the body and to never buy medicine from "fake" scientist. He was the first to tell the difference between Measles and Smallpox and the origins of these diseases. He even introduced a mercurial ointment, a medicine filled with the metal mercury.
Like Al-Razi, many other scientist followed in his shoes. Ibn Sina wrote many books in which over 200 exist today and he studied the medical standards of the European and Islamic medical fields. He wrote books like the The Book of Healing (a scientific encyclopedia) and The Canon of Medicine, which many medical scholars still read today. He believed that medications should only be used in times of illness and some drugs are more effective based on the temperature of the environment.
Ibn Al-nafis, clarified Greek physician Calen's belief of the ventricles of the heart have an "invisible passages" throughout the septum, by disagreeing, saying that the blood from the right chamber of the heart must flow through the pulmonary artery to the lungs to combine with air. Although William Harvey is widely know for explaining the blood circulation, Al-Nafis really gave the study a jump start.
From physicians like Al-Razi to polymaths like Ibn Sina, without them, Medieval Islam would not have had such a huge influence on medicine like it did. This period set off many new questions about diseases and new studies along the way of the medical history.
Sources:
Medicalnewstoday.com
Localhistories.org
Explorable.com
Peopleof.oureverydaylife.com
Wikipedia.org
Quatr.us
Nlm.nih.gov
Vocabulary.com
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