The Physician as a Rebellious Intellectual, Fachbücher von N. Peter Joosse

The medical section of the Kit¿b al-Nä¿¿atayn or Book of the Two Pieces of Advice by the medieval author Abd al-Lä¿f ibn Y¿suf al-Baghd¿d¿ (1162-1231) challenges the idea that Arabic-Islamic medicine declined after the twelfth century A.D. Moreover, it offers some interesting insights into the social history of medicine. Abd al-Lä¿f composed his work as a diatribe directed against false knowledge, and employed the framework of Greek medical epistemology to criticize the rationalist physicians of his day and age. He argued that female and itinerant practitioners, relying on experience, were superior to some rationalists, and decried the wickedness and incompetence of certain medical practitioners of his time. In addition, he lambasted contemporaneous medical education because it put too much faith in a restricted number of textbooks such as the Canon of Medicine by the celebrated physician Ibn S¿n¿ (Avicenna), or chiefly relied on imperfect abridgments. The medical section of the Book of the Two Pieces of Advice is translated here for the first time in a modern language. It is preceded by a lengthy introduction that highlights Abd al-Lä¿fs complicated relation to both medicine and alchemy. The present study also contains the first full bibliography on Abd al-Lä¿f ibn Y¿suf al-Baghd¿d¿ and his milieu.