Five-minute digest
The Canon of Medicine, Book I
Summary
The Canon of Medicine (al-Qanun fi al-Tibb) is Ibn Sina's encyclopedia of medicine in five books, and Book I, the subject of this record, sets out the general principles on which the rest depends. It opens with a definition: medicine is the science of the states of the human body in health and when not in health, and of how health is lost and restored, with a theoretical part that gives knowledge and a practical part that guides the physician's judgment. The first part then lays out the foundations Ibn Sina took from Aristotle and Galen: the four elements; the temperaments, one balanced and eight unbalanced, varying with age, sex, region and each organ; the four humours, blood, serous humour (phlegm), yellow bile and black bile, and how they arise from digested food in the liver; the members, meaning the bones, muscles, nerves, arteries and veins; and the faculties, natural, vital and animal, with their seats in the liver, heart and brain. Here he notes that physicians place sensation in the brain while Aristotle placed the source of all faculties in the heart, and says the philosopher's view is deeper but the question belongs to natural philosophy rather than to the doctor. The second part treats disease: the kinds of disorder, the phases of illness, and the causes, including air and seasons, food and drink, movement and rest, sleep and waking, retention and evacuation, and the passions of the mind, whose effects he explains by the expansion and contraction of the vital breath. It then gives the signs of disease in the pulse, the urine and the stools. The third part is a manual of hygiene across the life span: care of the newborn, bathing, swaddling, breastfeeding and the choice of a wet-nurse, rocking and lullabies, the moral formation of children by guarding them from anger and fear, exercise, massage, bathing, food and sleep for adults, the regimen of the aged, and advice for travellers. The fourth part classifies treatment by diet, medicines and manual operation, with rules for evacuation by bloodletting, purging and emesis, for allaying pain, and for leaving an unclear disease to nature. The library text is O. Cameron Gruner's 1930 English translation, which interleaves Book I with Gruner's long commentary, sometimes abridges the text, and is an OCR transcription; the reprint front matter, appendix and index are omitted.
Top Lessons
Theory serves judgment
Ibn Sina insists that medical theory and practice are not two sciences but two aspects of one: theory gives knowledge, and practice is the knowledge that lets a physician form an opinion on which to base treatment. Learning principles is for the sake of sound judgment at the bedside.
Mind and body in one regimen
Book I treats the passions as causes of bodily change and calls for guarding children from anger, fear, despondency and sleeplessness, because habits of mind and states of the body shape each other. Ibn Sina makes emotional formation part of hygiene.
Inheriting and ordering a tradition
The Canon gathers Hippocrates, Galen, Aristotle and later physicians into one ordered system, noting where they disagree, as on the heart and brain. Its strength is clear arrangement, which made it a textbook for six centuries.
Caution in treatment
Part 4 counsels leaving an unclear disease to nature, allaying pain first, using poppy no further than needed, and avoiding excessive evacuation. These rules show a measured therapeutics within the humoral framework.
Verified Quotes
“When, in regard to medicine, we say that practice proceeds from theory, we do not mean that there is one division of medicine by which we know, and another, distinct therefrom, by which we act.”
“But physicians still keep to the opinion that the brain is the chief seat of sentient life, and that each sense has its own distinct member whereby it manifests function.”
“the movement is for the benefit of the body, and the music is for the benefit of the mind.”
“For just as bad habits of thought supervene on intemperament of the body, so also a physical intemperament may be traced to habits of mind which are contrary to the ideal.”
Frequently cited
“Therefore in safeguarding the emotions the health of the mind and body are at the same time maintained.”
“When you do not know the nature of a malady, leave it to Nature ; do not strive to hasten matters.”
“If it is necessary to induce a stuporose state, do not go beyond the use of such as white poppy. Its anodyne action is well-known.”
“Remember, too, that among the advantageous contributory factors in treatment is the help afforded by anything which exalts the sensitive and vital faculties : for instance, joyfulness.”
Medical Lens
Book I is the most influential statement of Greco-Islamic humoral medicine and a key document for the history of psychiatry and pharmacology. It organizes health around temperament (the balance of hot, cold, wet and dry), the four humours, and the natural, vital and animal faculties, and it lists the causes later called the six non-naturals: air, food and drink, motion and rest, sleep and waking, evacuation and retention, and the passions of the soul. The passions are explained physiologically as sudden or gradual expansions and contractions of the vital breath (pneuma), so that anger, joy, fear and gloom have bodily effects up to syncope and death; this gave medieval and Renaissance physicians, including Burton, a framework for melancholy and for emotional causes of disease. The regimen of childhood treats emotional formation as hygiene, and Part 4 counts the patient's joy among aids to treatment. On drugs, Ibn Sina makes allaying pain the first step when pain accompanies disease and limits narcotic stupor to agents such as white poppy, an early statement of caution with opium. Evacuation by bloodletting, cupping, purging and emesis is regulated by detailed indications. Gruner's commentary often draws comparisons with modern physiology and with his own philosophical system; those views are his, not Ibn Sina's, and readers should separate the two. Present the humoral explanations as the period's medicine rather than as anticipations of modern findings.
- Part 1, paras. 6-10
The definition of medicine, the relation of theory and practice, and whether there is a third state between health and disease.
- Part 1, Theses III-IV
The temperaments and their variation by age and sex; the four humours, their normal and abnormal forms, and their generation in the liver.
- Part 1, paras. 138-141
The seats of the faculties in brain, liver and heart, and the disagreement between Aristotle and the Galenic physicians.
- Part 2, Thesis 2, paras. 336-345
Effects of sleep, wakefulness and insomnia; the passions as movements of the breath, with fear, anger, gloom and shame; the parents' imagination and the offspring.
- Part 2, Thesis 3
The pulse and the urine as signs of disease, with their classification by quality and rhythm.
- Part 3, Thesis 1, paras. 690-733
Care of the newborn, breastfeeding and the wet-nurse, infant disorders including night-terrors, and the emotional regimen of childhood.
- Part 4, paras. 920-922 and 934-975
General rules of treatment, the relief of pain with white poppy, joy as an aid to cure, and the indications for bloodletting, purging and emesis.