Ophthalmology in medieval Islam: Encyclopedia II - Ophthalmology in medieval Islam - Their education

Ophthalmology in medieval Islam - Their education

To become a practitioner, there was no one fixed method or path of training. There was even no formal specialization in the different branches of medicine, as might be expected. But some students did eventually approximate to a specialist by acquiring proficiency in the treatment of certain diseases or in the use of certain drugs. “The Prince of Physicians” Avicenna, for example, was held to be more proficient than most others in his treatment of nervous diseases, and hence a large number of psychological cases were brought to him, the most famous being the Samanid prince Nooh ibn Mansur who thought of himself as a cow, and who was cured by Avicenna who was no more than 17 years of age. Avicenna himself benefited from the instruction of many teachers, ranging in subject from geometry to theology.

Nevertheless it was standard and necessary to learn and understand the works and legacy of predecessors, if one was to excel and surpass others in the field. Among those one can mention ‘the alteration of the eye’ by Yuhanna ibn Masawayh, the great Nestorian Christian physician, whose work can be considered the earliest work on Ophthalmology, only to be eclipsed by that of none other but Hunain ibn Ishaq, known in the west as Johannitius, for his work ‘The ten treatises of the eye’. Other famous landmarks are Alhazen’s Opticae Thesaurus, Rhazes’ Continens, Ali Ibn Isa’s Notebook of the Oculists, and Jibrail Bukhtishu’s Medicine of the Eye, among numerous others.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Their education", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki