94 LITERATURE OF THE ARABS. 



The natural sciences were cultivated by the Arabs 

 not only with great ardour and success, but with 

 judicious views of the means whereby their progress 

 might be promoted. The knowledge which they 

 possessed of medicine is a subject of curious inquiry. 

 In a country where the climate is healthful and the 

 inhabitants abstemious, the healing art was not likely 

 to be highly esteemed ; and accordingly we find tire 

 starving physicians of Arabia complaining that exer- 

 cise and temperance deprived them of the greatest 

 part of their practice. About the time of Moham- 

 med the profession appears to have been held in 

 better repute. His contemporary, Hareth ibn Kal- 

 dah, an eminent practitioner who had settled at 

 Mecca, was occasionally honoured with his conver- 

 sation and applause. This learned personage was 

 physician to Abu Beker, and a pupil of the Greek 

 school of Jondisabour in Persia, founded by Shapoor 

 I. who, according to Abulfarage, married a daughter 

 of the Emperor Aurelian, and by her means intro- 

 duced the doctrines of Hippocrates into the East. 



When conquest had supplied the Arabs with the 

 means of luxury and intemperance, this science was 

 better appreciated. In the schools of Bagdad and 

 Alexandria, the study of physic was encouraged 

 with the usual munificence of the caliphs. Trans- 

 lations of Hippocrates and Galen issued from the 

 same manufactory that had clothed Plato and Aris- 

 totle in an Oriental dress. Most of these versions, 

 the merit of which is freely discussed by Renaudot, 

 and piously defended by Casiri, are ascribed to Ho- 

 nain, an eminent physician of the Nestorian sect, 

 who died A.D. 576 ; and Messue, the celebrated pre- 

 ceptor of Almamoun, who was principal or superin- 



