THE ARABS. 211 



to whom the oldest, and, at the same time, one of the richest 

 sources of knowledge, that of the Indian physicians, had been 

 early opened.* Chemical pharmacy was created by the Arabs, 

 while to them are likewise due the first official prescriptions 

 regarding the preparation and admixture of different remedial 

 agents the dispensing recipes of the present day. These 

 were subsequently diffused over the south of Europe by the 

 school of Salerno. Pharmacy and Materia Medica, the first 

 requirements of practical medicine, led simultaneously, in two 

 directions, to the study of botany and to that of chemistry. 

 From its narrow sphere of utility and its limited application, 

 botany gradually opened a wider and freer field, comprehend- 

 ing investigations into the structure of organic tissues and 

 their connection with vital forces, and into the laws by which 

 vegetable forms are associated in families, and may be distin- 

 guished geographically according to diversities of climate and 

 differences of elevation above the earth's surface. 



From the time of the Asiatic conquests, for the mainte- 

 nance of which Bagdad subsequently constituted a central point 

 of power and civilization, the Arabs spread themselves, in the 

 short space of seventy years, over Egypt, Cyrene, and Car- 

 thage, through the whole of Northern Asia to the far remote 

 western peninsula of Iberia. The inconsiderable degree of 

 cultivation possessed by the people and their leaders might 

 certainly incline us to expect every demonstration of rude bar 

 barism ; but the mythical account of the burning of the Alex 

 andrian Library by Amru, including the account of its appli- 

 cation, during six months, as fuel to heat 4000 bathing rooms, 

 rests on the sole testimony of two writers who lived 580 years 

 after the alleged occurrence took place.t We need not here 

 describe how, in more peaceful times, during the brilliant 

 epoch of Al-Mansur, Haroun Al-Raschid, Mamun, and Mota* 

 sem, the courts of princes, and public scientific institutions, 

 were enabled to draw together large numbers of the most dis 

 tinguished men, although without imparting a freer develop- 



* On the knowledge which the Arabs derived from the Hindoos re- 

 garding the Materia Medica, see Wilson's important investigations in the 

 Oriental Magazine of Calcutta, 1823, February and March ; and those 

 of Royle, in his Essay on the Antiquity of Hindoo Medicine, 1837, p. 56- 

 59, 64-66, 73, and 92. Compare an account of Arabic pharmaceutical 

 writings, translated from Hindostanee, in Ainslie (Madras edition), p. 

 289. 



t Gibbon, vol. ix., chap. li. , p. 392 ; Heeren. Gesch. des Studiums der 

 Classischen Litteratur, bd. i., 1797, s. 44 mid 72 ; Sacy, Abd-Allatif, p 

 240 ; Parthey, Das Alexandrinische Museum, 1838. s. iOf>. 



