Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/236

 felt a very strong desire that his people, the Arabs, should acquire knowledge of all the useful branches of learning, and more especially of medicine and philosophy; and accordingly, as the Greeks were then universally admitted to be the only nation which possessed that knowledge, and as scarcely any scientific books written in the Arabic language existed at that early date, he directed all his efforts to the finding of Greek originals and of the men qualified to translate them into Arabic. Already as early as the sixth century A. D., Sergius, a Christian of Ras el Ain, had translated a considerable number of Greek treatises into the Syrian tongue, but his work was found to be of an inferior character, and for this reason could not be utilized to any great extent in the present undertaking. Honein (ninth century), one of the most eminent scholars of the Arabic Renaissance, revised a few of these translations and thus rendered them of some service; but by far the larger part of this gigantic task of creating Arabic versions of the classical works of Greek literature, was performed during the ninth century, a period during which the reign of the Arabs extended from the Ganges on the east to the Atlantic on the west. By the end of the eighth century the work of translating had advanced only to the point of producing a single treatise on medicine and a few relating to alchemy; but before the ninth was completed, the Arabs had in their possession, in the form of translations, nearly all the scientific literature of Greece, and, more than this, they could boast that not a few men belonging to their own nation had already become celebrated as scientists of the very first rank.

The medical school at Djondisabour at the time (765 A. D.) when the Caliph Almansur decided to carry out the ambitious scheme which he had been meditating, was practically under the control of a family of Nestorian Christians. A large hospital formed the nucleus of the institution and furnished all the material needed for familiarizing the student with the different diseases and