THE ARABS. 581 



articles of commerce, which were so important to medicine, 

 to manufactures, and to the pomp of temples and palaces; and 

 to discover the native region of each, which was often art- 

 fully concealed from motives of avarice. Starting from the 

 staple emporium of Gerrha, on the Persian Gulf, and from 

 Yemen, the native district of incense, numerous caravan- 

 tracks intersected the whole interior of the Arabian penin- 

 sula to Phoenicia and Syria, and thus everywhere diffused a 

 taste for and a knowledge of the names of these powerful 

 natural products. 



The science of medicine which was founded by Dioscorides 

 in the school of Alexandria, when considered with refe- 

 rence to its scientific development, is essentially a creation of 

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

 the richest sources of knowledge, that of the Indian physi- 

 cians, had been early opened.* Chemical pharmacy was 

 created by the Arabs, whilst to them are likewise due the 

 first official prescriptions regarding the preparation and ad- 

 mixture 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, comprehending investigations into the struc- 

 ture of organic tissues, and their connection with vital forces, 

 and into the laws by which vegetable forms are associated 

 in families, and may be distinguished geographically, accord- 

 ing 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, 



* On the knowledge which the Arabs derived from the Hindoos 

 regarding Materia Medica, see Wilson's important investigations in 

 the Oriental Magazine of Calcutta, 1823, Feb. and March; and those 

 of Royle, in his Essay on the Antiquity of Hindoo Medicine, 1837, 

 pp. 56-59, 64-66, 73, and 92. Compare an account of Arabic phar- 

 maceutical writings, translated from Hindostanee, in Ainslie, (Madras 

 edition,) p. 289. 



