Journal of Research on History of Medicine
Volume:8 Issue: 2, May 2019

A significant issue in medical health care studies is the representation of illnesses and how they change and affect public attitudes through years. Diachronic corpus-driven linguistics has provided an opportunity for researchers to study these changes in the course of time. Having benefited from a corpus-driven approach and collocations analysis, this study was an attempt to shed light on the representations of six deadly infectious diseases prevailing from 15th to 17th centuries. The chosen corpus for this study was Early English Books Online which includes all the books written within these three centuries. The deadly diseases were selected based on Catalyst Media Network hierarchy of deadliest diseases in human history and their frequencies were first extracted, and then collocations associated with each disease were investigated and reported. Three historical phases of pre-pandemic, pandemic and post-pandemic were considered to categorize the collocations semantically. The analysis of data revealed that public conceptualization of deadly diseases changed from one century to another, as they were initiated, expanded, and treated. The findings might be suggestive for health care researchers, health service training programmers, medical counselors, and policy makers to shape and modify the public attitudes about epidemics consciously.

Medicine is one of the important sciences thriving a lot in the Iranian civilization. It found its way into other fields of civilization by Jondi Shapur School at ancient times. By the emergence of Islam in Iran, Medicine continued to flourish, and Iranian medicine had a great impact on Medicine in the Islamic civilization. Throughout different periods of History of Iran, the science of Medicine has been a matter of interest by both people and rulers; one of these periods is Safavid, during which Medicine had a big progress, and one of the sources concerned with this science is travelogues. Travelogues deal with different political and social issues. In the Safavid period, the relation between the West and the East resumed, and accordingly many travelers came to Iran, as a result of which many travelogues were written at this time, one of the most important of which is the Travelogue by Jean Chardin, the French traveler. Chardin, in this great work, reported the political and social situations in Iran. One of his most significant reports is on Medicine. And as a foreigner, he wrote about physicians and medical treatments at that time. This report is very important due to his study of Iranian health care. The present research was done through a descriptive analytical approach and a critical study of Medicine, based on Chardin’s travelogue. Research findings indicated although Chardin’s travelogue is one of the most important sources on Sociology in Safavid period, it is also important in terms of Iranians’ diseases and medical concerns. However this tracelogue bears some misconceptions about the Iranian medical heritage as well.

Various factors have been involved in the growth and flourishing of Medicine as one of the most important sciences in Islamic civilization. The transfer of the Chaldean and Greek Medicine tradition to Islamic Medicine by the Sabians of Harran can be regarded as an essential element in its development in Islamic civilization. The present study seeks to investigate the influence of Sabians of Harran on Islamic Medicine and explore the areas which provided the grounds for the Sabians of Harranon Islamic Medicine. It is also an attempt to find out how they influenced the progress of Medicine in Islamic civilization. A descriptive- analytical method was adopted on early sources and later studies to answer the research questions. The research results indicated that in the first place, factors such as the Chaldean Medicine tradition, the culture and Medicine of Greek, the transfer of the Harran Scoole Medicine in Baghdad were the causes of the flourishing of Islamic Medicine. Then, the caliphs and other officials’ treatment through doctors’ examinations had contribution to the establishment and administration of hospitals, while influencing the process of medical sciences in Baghdad and other parts of the Muslim world, thereby helping the development of this science in Islamic civilization.

Persian scientists of ancient times made a significant contribution to the field of surgery. Among them, Avicenna (980–1037 CE) provided the most detailed presentation of surgical procedures. The present paper aimed to review Avicenna’s great medical encyclopedia, Canon of Medicine, on ratqā (a female genital tract anomaly) related to gynecologic diseases. Avicenna was familiar with different causes of female genital tract anomalies. He described their signs, symptoms, natural courses, treatments and outcomes. He also noted that surgery was the only treatment of imperforate hymen or any type of vaginal agenesis. He elaborated interestingly on the operation instruments, patient positioning before operation, and the operation method, complications, post-operative and follow-up care. Although many surgical procedures described were previously mentioned by his Persian, Arab, Greek or Indian predecessors, he extended their comments and techniques in many ways, which shows that he not only pointed out related theories but practiced them himself.

Inguinal hernia is one of the oldest known diseases in medicine. The first documents of the diagnosis of this disease are seen in Egypt and Mesopotamian civilizations. Razi in book Al-Hawi and Avicenna in book The Canon of Medicine well described this disease and its medical treatment methods. The excellent treatment level of this disease can be found in the writings of Zahrawi, who not only well treated it with non-surgical method, but also completed its surgery with his genius and expertise . Given the writings of Zahrawi on the inguinal hernia in al-Tasrif book, as the surgery is described in detail and the side effects of any surgical procedure are explained, it is inferred that he has treated many patients by surgical procedure and of course, the patients have improved after the surgery, indicating the magnificence of surgical knowledge at the age of this scientist.