LITER ATrilE OF THE ARABS. 83 



merits as the Admirable Crichton ; wliile in the med- 

 ical world he attained a celebrity rivalled only by 

 the fame of Hippocrates and Galen. He was born 

 in the year 980, at a small village near Bokhara. 

 Removing to Bagdad for the prosecution of his 

 studies, he there applied himself to the cultivation 

 of philosophy and medicine, in both of Avhich his 

 progress was surprisingly rapid. Besides physic, 

 the range of his acquirements comprehended logic, 

 morals, metaphysics, astronomy, philology, mathe- 

 matics, natural history, and theology. While yet 

 in his nineteenth year, Avicenna Avas regarded 

 even by the old and experienced as a complete pro- 

 digy of learning, and the deference paid to his judg- 

 ment was sufficient to flatter his utmost vanity. 

 During his residence at Hamadan, he W' as chosen 

 first physician to the sultan, and afterward raised to 

 the dignity of vizier. His literary fame, and that of 

 the brilliant court to which he was attached, drew 

 the admiration of surrounding princes. But his 

 popularity was short-lived, and his life seemed des- 

 tined to be a restless one. Finding his liberty 

 endangered, for having refused the invitation of 

 Mahmoud of Ghizni to honour his capital with a 

 visit, he withdrew to Jorjan, where the splendour 

 of his reputation, not only as a physician but a man 

 of science, increased beyond all rivalry. 



The subsequent history of this remarkable person- 

 age is short. Though possessed of an excellent con- 

 stitution, he had so impaired it by the use of wine, 

 and its accompanying vice, that he died from intes- 

 tinal inflammation, in his 56th year, at Hamadan. 

 Avicenna is one of those on whom praise and vitu- 

 peration have been lavished wqth equal excess. It 

 may be somewhat difficult to account for the despotic 

 supremacy which his writings acquired in the Sa- 

 racen schools ; for they w^ere not only translated, 

 abridged, and commented on, but formed text-books 

 for the professors in the principal colleges of Europe, 

 and continued the oracles of medical knowledge for 



