22 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



he became blind. At first he thought to have submitted to 

 an operation, but when he asked how many membranes the 

 eye had? and could not obtain an answer, al-Eazi said, 

 " Whoever does not know that shall bring no instrument 

 near my eyes," and when they still made representations to 

 him that the operation might be successful, he rejoined, " I 

 have seen so much of the world that you only bore me." 



Al-Eazi was very charitable, and often gave money to the 

 sick poor while he lived in poverty himself. He died at 

 Bagdad, or in Rai, either in 923, or more probably in 932, in 

 extreme old age. We have the titles of over two hundred of 

 his works, on food, on medicine, anatomy, astronomy, mathe- 

 matics, logic, religion : treatises and commentaries without 

 end. Nothing seems to have been too great or too small 

 for his comprehensive genius, from the most abstruse 

 subjects to " the eating of fruits before or after meals." He 

 wrote many treatises on food and medicine, a work on 

 aromatic seeds and roots, another on edible fruits, wine, &c. 



Yahya Ebn Serapion, usually called Serapion the elder, 

 was a Sj^ian physician, and a contemporary of al-Razi, who 

 often quotes him. Nothing is known of his personal 

 history. 



In this period the study of Science attained the summit 

 of its perfection throughout the whole of the Mohammedan 

 world, in the East, in Egypt, Mauritania, and Spain, 

 many eminent physicians adorning all the various seats of 

 learning. Mesne, the younger, a Jacobite Christian,* was 

 born at Maridin, on the Euphrates, and studied medicine 

 and philosophy at Bagdad. He afterwards went to Cairo, 



'''■ These Jacobites were so called after Jacob Baradaeus, a Sjaian, 

 wlio in the sixth century vigorously defended the doctrine of Eutyches, 

 an abbot of Constantinople, in the fifth century. This doctrine is, that 

 there was but one nature in Christ, the human having been absorbed 

 in the divine. 



