Volume 1

The book of the ten treatises on the eye, ascribed to Hunain ibn Is-hâq (809-877 A. D.) : the earliest existing systematic text-book of ophthalmology / the Arabic text edited from the only two known manuscripts, with an English translation and glossary, by Max Meyerhof.

  • Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq al-ʻIbādī, 809?-873.
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The book of the ten treatises on the eye, ascribed to Hunain ibn Is-hâq (809-877 A. D.) : the earliest existing systematic text-book of ophthalmology / the Arabic text edited from the only two known manuscripts, with an English translation and glossary, by Max Meyerhof. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    None of these five small treatises exists to-day in the catalogued libraries. It may be that some of the other separate treatises ascribed to Hunain were identical with treatises incorporated into the Ten Treatises on the Eye. So e.g. Hunain’s books On Simple Remedies, On the Secrets of Compound Remedies, and On the Difference of Flavours. But as all these books- are lost, and we are not able to identify them. F.—The Editions of Hunain’s Ten Treatises on the Eye. When Hirschberg began his investigations of Arabic ophthalmology, with the help of the orientalists J. Lippert, E. Mittwoch and J. Mann, he found the name of this book frequently mentioned in the old Arabic and Persian text¬ books on eye-diseases (x) ; Ar-Razi ^j\J\ (Rhazes, Xth cen¬ tury a.d.) in his Haivi (Continens) gives frequent and long quotations from this book. The Arab 'Ali b. 'Isa and the Persian Zarrin-Dast j j j (both Xlth century) name this book as the principal source of their extracts. The Syrian Khalifa <idi- and the Anda¬ lusian al-Ghafiqi jiUJI do the same, as well as the anony¬ mous Arabic oculist (Cod. 876 Escorial) and the Latin text-book of Alcoati, Christianus Toledanus (2), all of them Arabs of the XHth century. I could easily enlarge the number of these quotations from many late ophthalmic books from the pens of Arabic medical writers. O J. Hirschberg, Ueber das dlteste arabische Lehrbuch der Augenheil- kunde. Sitzungsber. der Konigl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. XLIX, 1903. Phil.—hist. Classe, November 26. (ofc) J. Hirschberg, Die arabischen Lehbucher der Augenheilkunde. Unter Mitwirkung von J. Lippert und E. Mittwoch. Anhang zu den Abhandl. d.K. Preuss. Ak. d. Wiss., 1905, Berlin, 1905. (2) The name Alcoati means, according to H. Derenbourg Al-Qiiti esM' te. the Goth (J. Hirschberg’s Corrections and Additions to his History of Ophthalmology, Berlin 1918, p. 116). (oo)