Basics of Iranian Traditional Medicine Anthropology Based on Avicenna's Views and its Comparison with Modern Medicine

From the view of Islamic philosophers, especially Ibn Sina, philosophy is accountable for providing the basis for other sciences. According to Ibn Sina, medicine is one of the aspects of natural philosophy the concepts and judgments of which originate from natural philosophy. In his medical textbooks, Ibn Sina draws on philosophical theories and views, one of which is a discussion of humanity and its reality. According to him: 1) Human being is composed of two components of soul and body, which are interdependent. 2) He is a total solidarity which includes components, and the total reality is different from the reality of the components. 3) Human being is not a complicated machine that can be analyzed quantitatively, but it has diverse qualitative dimensions. 4) Human is a living organism, but it is not solely a biological being. These four mentioned cases are some of Avicenna’s philosophical theories, which provide the foundation for traditional medicine with regard to anthropological issues. In this article, along with expounding these basics, a comparison has been made with the modern medical anthropology.