A Treatise on the Canon of Medicine of Avicenna pdf download

A TREATISE ON THE CANON OF MEDICINE OF AVICENNA, INCORPORATING A TRANSLATION OF THE FIRST BOOK (SIGNED FIRST EDITION)

A TREATISE ON THE CANON OF MEDICINE OF AVICENNA – Sample Book

A TREATISE ON THE CANON OF MEDICINE OF AVICENNA

We now discuss each kind of locality in turn.

• Hot countries. The hair becomes dark or black and frizzly, and becomes gathered into tight clumps like pepper­ flowers; the digestion is weakened. Old age comes on early, owing to the great dissipation of breath, and the draining away of the bodily moisture. This is seen in the land of the blacks (Ethiopia, Abyssinia). Persons who reside in such countries become aged at thirty, are timid (as the breath is so much dispersed), and the body becomes soft and dark.
• Cold countries. Persons who go to live in cold countries become robust and stronger, and bolder and more coura­ geous. The digestion improves. If the climate is also damp the people will become obese and fleshy and coarse. The veins will not show under the skin of the hands, and the joints are indistinct in outline. The body becomes pale and delicate.
• Damp wet ountries. Here the summer is not very warm, nor the winter very cold. People living in humid- coun­ tries have beautiful faces with soft smooth complexions. They. soon get tired with exercise.  They are liable to develop pro­ tracted fevers, with looseness of the bowels and menorr hage. Piles, which are common, often bleed. Septic ulcers, fistulas, and aphthous and pustular stomatitis are common; also epilepsy.
• Here the summer is very hot and the winter very cold. People who live in dry climates develop a dry tem pera -. ment. The skin becomes dry and dusky as a result of the gre_at dryness and roughness of the atmosphere. The brain soon becomes dry in temperament. .
• Residence in rocky and exposed places. The climate in such places is very hot in summer, and very cold in winter. The body becomes hardened and sturdy, very hairy, strong, with large promine!).t joints. D ryness rules in such persons; they are very wide-awake, and resist bad habits, are pertinacious, warlike, skilful in the arts, and are energetic in character.
• Residence in high altitudes. People residing in high altitudes are healthy, strong, and capable of much physical work; they are long-lived.

High altitudes are beneficial for nerve cases, but unfavourable for heart cases.

Moist humours accumulate in the head in people living in these regions, as that is an effect onthe south ; they pass downwards and render the intestines· loose. The limbs are weak and flabby ; the senses are dulled ; the appetite for food and drink is enfeebled ; and the lack of heat and weakness of the stomach accounts. for the fact that wine is readily intoxicant . Ulcers heal and soften slowly. ·

Effect on the female sex : Menstruation is profuse and is arrested with difficulty . P regnancy is rare. Abortion is fre­ quent, simply because illness is so frequent.

Effect on the male sex : There is a liability to severe diar­ rhoea ; bleeding of piles ; humid ophthalmia. But these are quickly recovered from. Persons over fifty years of age are liable to paralysis, which follows on catarrhal conditions. At all ages there is a tendency to asthma, spasmodic diseases (tetanic spasm, epilepsy), because there is this tenaency. for serous humour to accumulate in the head.

Both sexes are liable to develop fever in which heat and cold occur simultaneously. Prolonged fevers come on in the winter, and are nocturn al. Acute fevers are rare because of the liability to diarrhoea, so that the more attenuated part of the humours is continuously dispersed.

• Residence in easterly countries. When a district is

exposed to the east, and is sheltered (by trees) on the west, it .is healthy and the climate is good. This is because the sun is high over it in the early part of the day, thus rendering the atmosphere clear. The purified air passes on and gentle winds blow over it in advance of the rising sun, their direction being corresponding.

• Residence in westerly countries. When a district is exposed on the west, and is sheltered (by trees) on the east, it does not receive the sun till late in the day, when the rays are already

oblique. Hence the air never becomes rarefied or dry, but remains dense and humid. The prevailing winds are westerly and nocturnal. The climate of such places is therefore as of damp countries, and the residents have a moderately hot and heavy temperament. The climate is heavy because the air is heavy. Were it not for that, the climate would be spring-like in nature.

Such districts are not as healthy as easterly ones, and they tend to become more unhealthy. Some say that this kind of country is spring-like in its character, and very healthy com­ pared with other kinds of country. But to my thinking the climate has very bad characters, and this is because the sun’s rays

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