Abu Al-Qasim

Abu Al-Qasim , or Abū Al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn Abbās Al-Zahrāwī of its complete name (in Arab: rear RTL أبوالقاسمبنخلفبنالعباسالزهراوي), known in Occident under the name of Aboulcassis (Zahra v. 940 - died with Cordoue in 1013) one of largest the Chirurgie Arab NS , is regarded as one of the founding fathers of the modern Chirurgie.

Biography

It is born towards 940 in El Zahra, small village located at ten kilometers in the North-West of Cordoue, in Andalusia (Moslem Spain) where it will pass all its life, under the reign of the caliphs omeyyades Abderrahmane III and Al Hakam II. It went down from the Arab tribe of Ansar.

One knows only few things of his life apart from what one learns by his works: the village of El Zahra was plundered and destroyed at the time of the Reconquista . Its name appears for the first time in the writings of Abu Muhammad ibn Hazm (993 - 1064), which placed it among the eminent doctors of the Moorish Spain. Its first detailed biography was written sixty years after its death by Al-Humaydi, in its work Jadhwat Al-Muqtabis (Of the Andalusian scientists).

It passed almost all its life to El Zahra: it is there that he studied, taught and practiced medicine and the surgery until in 1011, date on which El Zahra was plundered.

Work

Abu Al-Qasim was a doctor at the court of the caliph Al-Hakam II. He devoted his whole life to the advance of medicine, in particular the surgery. Its philosopher's stone, the Al-Tasrif (practice) is a medical encyclopedia of thirty volumes which takes stock of medical knowledge of its time and confronts them with its personal experience.

Like Avicenne and Rhazes, Aboulcassis is a “redecouvror” of the old Greek texts. It is inspired thus mainly by the Byzantine Paul d' Egine (7th century), of which it takes again and enriches the texts.

The influence Abu Al-Qasim extends in Occident on more than five centuries: Al-Tasrif is translated into Latin at the 12th century and becomes the medical reference. At the 14th century, the French surgeon Guy de Chauliac referred to Al-Tasrif more than two hundred times. Pietro Argallata depicts Al-Qasim as being “without the shade of a doubt the king of the surgeons”. At the time of the Rebirth, its work is always quoted, in particular by the French surgeon Jacques Delechamps.

Al-Tasrif

Al-Tasrif , the major work of Abu Al-Qasim in thirty volumes covers many fields, of which the dental care and the childbirth, adding to it of many personal data resulting of almost fifty years to career. It stressed in its work the importance of a relation patient doctor/positive and wrote with affection about its students, whom it called “my children”. He also insisted on the contribution of the care without worrying about the differences of social status. He was in favor of the thorough observation of each case in order to be able to establish the most precise possible diagnosis, and to thus recommend the treatment more adapted.

Al-Tasrif is divided into three parts:

1st on the theory and the general information of medicine;
2nd on the practice, disciplines diseases: The mode at the child and the old men, the drop, rheumatisms, the abscesses, the wounds, the poisons and venoms, the external affections of the skin and the fever;
3rd on the surgery: Cauterization, small interventions, the bleeding, the operation of calculations of the bladder and gangrene, luxations, fractures, the hémiplégie of traumatic origin and the childbirth.

Al-Tasrif was translated into Latin and was illustrated at the 12th century by Gerard de Crémone. It was the medical independent source in Europe and was useful like reference to the doctors and surgeons during several centuries.

Abu Al-Qasim did not always obtain the merit of its medical projections: it had already described in its Al-Tasrif the method which one calls today “Kocher” for the treatment of a dislocated shoulder, as well as the position “Walcher” in Obstétrique. It had already described how to bind blood-vessels of the centuries before Ambroise Paré popularizes the method. It was also the first to write books on the dental apparatuses and to have described the hereditary nature of the Hémophilie. It is also the first, in 963, to have described the extra-uterine Grossesse, then mortal.

Medical projections

Abu Al-Qasim realized, described and supplemented many surgical gestures like:

the Trepanation;
the Amputation S;
treatment of the dents, the hernias, the anal imperforation;
the cure of aneurism;
the operation of the goiter;
lithotomy;
the excision of the varixes;
surgical treatment of the osteoarthrites in particular vertebral tubercular patients (Badly of Pott) seven centuries before Pott;
the use of cauteries to make the Hémostase.

Moreover:

it is the first to practice arterial bindings;
it is the first with speaking about the Trendelenburg position, in particular in the operations of the small basin. This traditional position is allotted to the German surgeon Frederic Trendelenburg;
method of reduction of luxations of the shoulder (current Operation of Kocher);
patellectomies, almost thousand years before Ralph Brooke;
the use of the bowels of the cats in abdominal surgery, joinings with a wire and 2 needles, the joinings under-dermiques which do not leave any scar;
in Obstetric, it advises various techniques according to the various dystocic presentations. He also speaks about the position currently known like the position of Walcher and about the useful instruments to extract the dead fetuses in utero ;
it passes to be the inventor of the Alambic, used for the distillation of alcohol. But it even specifies him as the etymology comes from the Greek alexandrine ambix (= vase ).

It wrote many books, which, translated into Latin, will influence the Western surgery. It carried out boards with the first representations of surgical instruments, often invented by him. These boards constitute an invaluable catalog of the surgical tools then used.

He invented enter others of the devices which allow:

to make the inspection of the interior of the urethra;
to withdraw foreign objects of the throat;
to inspect the ears.

External bonds

Partial source

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