Page:A History of Hindu Chemistry Vol 1.djvu/125



The Arabians are acknowledged on all hands to have played a prominent part in the propagation of science and mathematics in the West. When in the dark and middle ages, the lamp of knowledge had begun to burn very low in Europe and even when the very vestiges of Greek culture and learning had all but disappeared, save in the obscure and dingy cells of the monk, it was the Arabs who carried there the accumulated intellectual treasures of the East, and thus laid the foundation, so to speak, of modern European greatness.

It will, perhaps, be not out of place to discuss here briefly as to how much India indirectly contributed to this result in the departments of medicine, pharmacy and other kindred subjects.