Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/122

 taken by his pupil Issa b. Thakerbokht, who was the author of a book on therapeutics. Later came Bokhtishu' son of George who was physician to Harunu r-Rashid in 171 (= A.D. 787), and then Gabriel, another son of George, who was sent to attend Ja'far the Barmecide in 175 and stood high in Harun's favour: he wrote an introduction to logic, a letter to al-Ma'mun on foods and drinks, a manual of medicine based on Dioscorus, Galen, and Paul of Aegina, medical pandects, a treatise on perfumes, and other works. In medicine, as will be remembered, the Indian system had been introduced at Junde-Shapur and combined with the Greek, but the latter clearly predominated. Another important settler in Baghdad was the Jewish Syrian physician John bar Maserjoye, who translated the Syntagma of Aaron into Syriac and presided over the medical school gathered in the Muslim capital. For a long time the Arabic work in medicine was limited to translation of the great Greek authorities and practice on the lines learned in Alexandria. We have already referred to the unfortunate influence derived from the Egyptian school which diverted both medicine and chemistry into semi-magical lines, an evil tendency from which the Arabic school never quite freed itself. A considerable time elapsed before the Arabic speaking community produced any original writers on medicine. About the end of the third century we find Abu l-Abbas Ahmad b. Thayib as-Sarakhsi, a pupil of al-Kindi, who is stated to have written a treatise on the