Science and Medicine in Islam

The achievements of medieval Muslim scholars in the fields of philosophy, science and medicine are now well recognized, and Franz Rosenthal's work has been instrumental in helping us to understand these. In this third collection of his articles, he demonstrates the information to be gained from tracing the Greek roots of the science and medicine of the Islamic world in the Middle Ages. Of particular concern here are the Hellenistic or late Hellenistic authors such as Galen, Hippocrates or Ptolemy. These articles show how Muslim writers have preserved much that has been lost in the Greek and played a vital part in ensuring the continuity of the classical tradition, and examine some of the specific ways in which they reacted to and developed it. They also deal with questions such as the place of the physician in society and the medical attitude towards homosexuality. As previously, the opportunity has been taken to add extra notes, and there is further included, published for the first time, a complete bibliography of the author's works.