PHYSICIANS AND PHILOSOPHERS. 617 



It is a far cry from the Greeks to the Saracens, though farther in 

 time than in space. Here we find philosophy, or rather metaphysics, and 

 medicine more intimately associated than at any other time or among 

 any other people. Every one of the ten or twelve men who became 

 prominent in Arabian philosophy was a physician. In fact the Arabs 

 treated philosophy as a branch of astronomy and the healing art. The 

 latter served a practical purpose, as did also the former in so far as it 

 was dealt with as astrology. Arab philosophy was, however, some- 

 thing very different from the science that bore the same name among 

 the Greeks. They studied philosophy, or rather they philosophized, 

 as a man would study navigation on a ship lying at anchor. Albeit 

 they were in this respect at no greater disadvantage than the schoolmen. 

 The one party was chiefly concerned to make any discoveries they might 

 light upon harmonize with the Koran and Aristotle; the other with 

 the Bible and Aristotle, with a little spice from Ptolemy thrown in. 

 Al-kindi, the philosopher par excellence of the Arabs, flourished in the 

 tenth century. He wrote on almost every imaginable subject from 

 arithmetic to astronomy, though under the former he discusses the 

 unity of God; his arithmetic was therefore something totally different 

 from that which forms the schoolboy's triangle with readin' and 'ritin'. 

 So far as is at present known all his works are lost, except those on 

 medicine and astrology. Eoger Bacon ranks him in some respects close 

 to Ptolemy. Al-farabi was a contemporary of the preceding and is 

 generally regarded as the earliest of the Arabian philosophers. How- 

 ever, medical science and even surgery could make little progress where 

 the knowledge of human anatomy was so inadequate. The Koran de- 

 nounces as unclean every person who touches a dead body, and an 

 article of Mohammedan faith forbids dissection. We should remember, 

 nevertheless, that the founder of anatomy, Vesalius, was sentenced to 

 death by the Inquisition as a magician, and only pardoned on condition 

 that he make a pilgrimage of penance to Jerusalem. This journey cost 

 him his life. And it is probable that he would not have got off even on 

 these relatively hard terms had he not enjoyed the favor of Philip II. 

 of Spain, who esteemed him highly for his medical skill. We have 

 the name of one Arab physician, Abdallatif of Bagdad, who was well 

 aware that anatomy could not be learned from books, strange as it 

 may seem that historians have thought it worth while to place to any 

 man's credit a truth so easily apprehended. The same authority avers 

 that Moslem doctors studied that branch of anatomy known as osteology 

 by examining the bones of the dead found in cemeteries. Averroes of 

 Cordova fills a large place in the history of Moorish philosophy in 

 Spain about the middle of the twelfth century. But in medical renown 

 he ranks far below Avicenna of Bokhara, who flourished about a cen- 

 tury and a half earlier. He was teacher of both philosophy and medi- 



