27 On the life of Avicenna (1549?) CR XI, 826–32
27 On the life of Avicenna (1549?)
CR XI, 826–32
Oration on the life of Avicenna, recited by Doctor Jakob Milich1
The entire nature of things is a theatre to be admired, in which God wills that he be beheld and that the distinct testimonies of His presence, wisdom and goodness be considered. Therefore the Architect of great wisdom has employed such a variety of skill in the building, arrangement, shapes, motions and powers that human minds would be forced to acknowledge that this most beautiful work was not blown together by chance, but that there is indeed a constructing mind. And they should conclude with the strongest approbation that men need to be subject to that constructing mind, and that our morals need to agree with that eternal precept which resides in the Maker Himself, who pours the rays of His light into us. And they need to conclude that the Maker is to be worshipped with true praises.
It is evident that the contemplation of nature is necessary for this important reason. Furthermore, we are also moved by our own benefit. Help for life has to be sought in this great variety of things, which are partly nourishment for our bodies, partly remedies. I commend the zeal and counsel of those who, in reciting the praises of the art of medicine, demonstrate in some way that the consideration of nature is pleasant and useful. Nevertheless, the scope of the argument is such that barely a few portions can be plucked from this multitude, and can be set out and demonstrated. And so I confess that I am discouraged by the greatness of the matter, so that I cannot provide an oration about the praise of the art, that is, about the contemplation of nature.
However, I deplore my sloth and that of us all; for we are all negligent in beholding nature, and in contemplating that theatre of God as it ought to be done – since, after all, God summons us to that study, nothing is sweeter than that reflection, and this diligence will be of great benefit for health and life. Although no one can be a sufficiently attentive spectator of nature, nevertheless all good minds are to be encouraged to that contemplation which is the most honourable for man. Indeed, since God Himself enjoins it, I pray to the Maker of nature Himself that He may incline the minds of many towards that study, and that He may rouse them to recognise, worship and praise Him in this contemplation.
1 Jakob Milich was rector of the University in 1549; for Milich, see further note 6, oration 18, p. 147.
The diligence of the doctors is praiseworthy: although no one person is capable of disclosing all of nature, nevertheless they have shown many parts that they revealed, and they preserve the knowledge of them for humankind; it is profitable to read their works, not only those in Greek, but also those composed among other peoples and in other times. For the more recent Arabs have discovered many things in nature and in the art that had been unknown to the Greeks; in this they were also much helped by the nature of the regions in which they lived. For Syria, Arabia, Egypt, Cyrenaica, Africa and Spain are extremely rich in remedies. And indeed, all the Arab writers traversed these places, and the Arab people were of keen wit, and were committed to this one field of study which they had learnt from their oldest forefathers, that is, from Job and others. Although most added much that was corrupt, nevertheless no one among the Arabic writers taught the art more purely than Avicenna. So, in order to commend Avicenna to students, I have decided to speak about his life and studies.
Avicenna was born in the year of the Lord 1145 in the town of Edessa in Commagene – which lies by the Euphrates and is subject to the king of Persia – of a noble father whose name was Hali, and a mother called Cithara, the daughter of a Persian satrap.2 Every time he remembered his father, he called him ‘Prince’, and later this title attached itself to the son. The boy was entrusted to a local teacher, who was distinguished in these lands by the renown of his intelligence and his teaching; when he realised that the youth's nature was appropriate for sciences, he taught him dialectic, geometry and astronomy soon after the first elements of writing. They say that Avicenna was exceedingly pleased by reading Euclid, so much so that he wrote a summary of that author. He continued in this course of studies with the private tutor until his eighteenth year. When Avicenna's father, who was also a man of great intelligence, noticed his son's powerful intelligence and his vigorous nature, he wanted to commit him to the court of the Persian king, where he would have the opportunity to practise his wit because of the variety and greatness of the duties. However, his son, who was already acquainted with the strife of the court, pleaded with his father to grant him leisure to learn. The father, who was also delighted by his son's talents, granted this, and commanded him to travel to Alexandria, furnished with supplies; there were still the remnants at Alexandria of the old and most famous school that had been distinguished by the concourse
2 Commagene is the northern Province of Syria. There seem to be several confusions about the details of the life of Avicenna (980–1037): cf. S. M. Afnan, Avicenna: His Life and Works (London, 1958).
of teachers and students under the Egyptian kings and then in Roman times. Although, because of the reign of the Saracens, the use of the Greek languages was no longer widespread, and all the arts were taught in a neglected way, and many corruptions were mingled with the sciences, nevertheless studies were not yet utterly silenced. There still persisted some remnants there, particularly of those arts of which human life cannot be devoid, such as medicine and astrology, but each was miserably marred by the ill will of the Saracen people. For in place of medicine they taught an illiterate and miscellaneous mass of experiences.
In place of astronomy, which measures the heavenly motions with fixed computation, and searches for the causes and effects of heavenly appearances, they preferred some kind of prediction, indeed divinatory magic. From this one can see that people's great savagery together with its diabolical cunning: since they could not take away the arts in their entirety, they nevertheless marred them thus.
At that time there lived in Alexandria the physician Rhazes,3 who prevailed over the others both in knowledge and in his success in healing; Avicenna turned to him. For when he saw that philosophy is certainly incomplete without the art of medicine, he directed his mind to the teaching of the physicians, so that he could comprehend nature disclosed in its entirety, as far as this can be done at all by human diligence. For in old times it was not dishonourable for princes to learn the art of medicine, as is shown by the examples of Peleus, Achilles, Alexander the Great and Pyrrhus,4 but nowadays the studies of princes and of the mighty are greatly different. When Avicenna was a youth, he studied with Rhazes, who was older; although he found much lacking in that teacher, he nevertheless attended him as being better than nothing.
However, when he had strengthened his judgement by age and knowledge, he realised that Rhazes had greater empirical knowledge than rational knowledge. Since he had been drawn to these studies kindled by divine inspiration, he easily understood the weakness of his teacher, and what was true or false in his teaching. For since Rhazes had departed too far from the sources, Hippocrates and Galen, necessarily his treatments were not free from errors. Avicenna says so expressly in book four on the general cure for
3 Rhazes (c. 854–925), who became the head of hospital in Baghdad, could not have met Avicenna.
4 Achilles, son of Peleus and Thetis, was brought up by the centaur Chiron, renowned for his knowledge of music, medicine and shooting; Pyrrhus (c. 318–272 BC) was a renowned general. Alexander the Great showed interest in treatment given to wounded friends: see Plutarch, Life of Alexander, VIII. I and XVI.
fevers. There he says that it would truly have been profitable for that man – here he means Rhazes – not to move too far away from the opinions of Galen and Hippocrates. That way there would be fewer contradictions and errors in his works.
After four years he left Alexandria and travelled to the Spanish town of Cordoba, where Averroes5 was teaching; summoned by his fame, Avicenna betook himself to him. In those times Averroes' name was very famous, but Averroes was of a harsh, quarrelsome and conceited disposition, and he acquired his fame by finding fault with others – he was often lured away from truth by his zeal in contradicting others; he overthrew the rightly established arts by sophistic tricks; he took away the mixtures of temperaments; denied that some humours originate in the liver, and he contrived a new and absurd opinion concerning nutrition. But what need is there to enumerate individual points? He only did this so that, having removed the authority of the old authors, he could put himself in their place. His boastful utterances are relevant here, by which he indicated that he would cleanse philosophy, and would make known again the true and unspoilt philosophy, shorn of all blemishes. These utterances and these boastful promises struck his students with consternation, and procured renown and admiration for the teacher. But I shall return to the history of Avicenna.
When he had remained in Cordoba for some time, and had listened to Averroes' teaching, he left him and returned to Alexandria. For since he had been properly instructed from childhood, and accustomed to geometry and demonstrations, he could easily distinguish between those who taught the truth and those who taught what was false. In Alexandria he began to set up as his teachers Hippocrates and Galen, whose teaching he judged to agree most with truth. For although the Greek language had been expelled, and the ancient authors, too, were banished, nevertheless some scholars searched for the origins. Therefore several works of Hippocrates, Galen and Ptolemy had been translated into Arabic by Saracens; not much later they were translated into Latin by the generosity of our emperors Lothar and Frederick II,6 and all schools have been using these translations up to these our own times.
Thus Avicenna turned to the true sources and, since he excelled in education and disposition, he could easily disclose and understand what
5 Again, Averroes (1126–98), who was born in Cordoba, could not have taught Avicenna.
6 Lothar III (1075–1137) was Duke of Saxony before becoming Emperor; for Frederick II, see note 3, oration 13, p. 114.
was unknown to others. When he had corroborated his medical knowledgein Alexandria and had travelled throughout Egypt, where he discovered several remedies that were unknown to other doctors, he returned to his country. When he had yielded the government to his brother, he dedicated himself to writing. For when he saw how much recent medicine had degenerated from ancient medicine, he wanted to recall it to its origins and to cleanse again what had become enveloped by mould and rust through the sloth of men.
Since Galen's books, in which the art is transmitted correctly, were not in the hands of those studying the art because of the imperfection of the times, and since furthermore Galen did not represent the entire art in one book, Avicenna himself provided a book in which he represents the entire art of medicine by a most learned and fitting method.7 In this he gathered into one body everything that is said dispersedly in Galen – organising the art as a body (sōmatopoiēsas tēn technēn), as the Greeks say – and represented, without sophistry, what he judged to be most true, after a long examination, in the practice of the art and in disputations with most learned men. This work by Avicenna was received with such praise by all the learned that it has been expounded by teachers in all public universities for more or less four hundred years. Since he brought Galen's disputations back to light he changed the course of studies in his century by that work, not a mean feat, in particular as empirical medicine only was in use.
We cannot make judgements on Avicenna's eloquence, because he wrote in Arabic and found a translator, such as that century had to offer, who without doubt expressed indistinctly many outstanding sentences by his inelegant translation. It would not be difficult to produce examples for this, if we were not prevented by the shortness of time. He employed discrimination in his writing in order to select only the best things, which he arranged so accurately that the elegance of this order could both attract and engage the reader. For he describes the art from the first beginnings and elements, and then elaborates it through temperaments, humours and the individual parts of the human body, so that the order itself may shed great light on the matters. Then he explains the general and specific diseases, their causes, their way of development, their signs and treatment so clearly that the reader needs nothing else. For he uses the simplest and clearest
7 The al-Qanun (codes of law) was translated in the Latin West by Gerard of Cremona and became known as the Canon. For its career as a textbook, see Nancy G. Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: the Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian Universities after 1500 (Princeton, 1987).
method, like a thread to guide the reader, so that he never strays from the purpose, as one notices it happens in some places to the more inexperienced in reading Galen. However, he does not intend by his writings to hold back the learned from reading Galen, but he intends to attract them further – so that they may know where the individual parts that Galen explains in individual books are to be recounted.
Indeed, in what pertains to the treatment of diseases and to remedies, he prevails by far over all those who wrote before him, and he has this praise, without debate, from all those who are in their right minds – although nowadays some, who have not corroborated the precepts of the art by any use, do not cease from bawling against him. Nevertheless, they describe remedies taken word for word from his book, and they act exactly as is said in the story about wine: ‘They find fault, and yet they drink.’ Furthermore, no one can express to its full merit the greatness of Avicenna's service in pointing out how the juices of herbs boiled with sugar can be preserved for a long time; and in transmitting for the first time the boiling of sugar pressed from cane, as it is brought to us nowadays. This boiling process does not exist anywhere among the ancient Greeks, nor was it in use before Avicenna's time.
Avicenna was also the first to make use of cassia for fistulae, a truly blessed remedy, which because of its outstanding quality can safely be offered to both children and the elderly. He has also pointed out the use of the root of rhubarb. Those who use it know how pleasantly that root draws out bile, and at the same time also strengthens the inner organs, especially the liver. I shall say nothing here about tamarind or about the various types of behen-nuts. How long it would be to enumerate the composite remedies whose mixture he first taught, pointing out their use for various kinds of diseases. I shall furthermore not say anything about his cures, which he effected with extraordinary success. With marvellous diligence, he saved the son of the Persian king, who was afflicted by phrenitis, and he delivered countless others who were afflicted by pernicious diseases.
If those who in a war saved a citizen or protected an imperilled soldier with their shield were decorated by the state, some with a golden crown, some with a statue, and even their children were given an annual income of natural products, what prize is due to him who did not save some individual citizen or some single city, but a great multitude of any kind of people and nations, and for so many centuries? No man's oration, be he ever so skilled in speaking, can describe the greatness of his service. In truth, although I
recognise my want of eloquence, nevertheless whenever this thought crosses my mind, I cannot restrain myself from praising him abundantly. And I would wish that God grant me such an oration by which I could drive out this lethargy from the minds of men and remove that extreme ingratitude, not only against men, but even more against God, who is the Maker of the remedies and the one who showed us the art. Since nevertheless the ill is so inveterate that it is utterly incurable, I, too, shall bear more patiently in my mind this fact of the times. Some time God will exact the penalty for this ingratitude with great severity.
But I urge you, young men, to keep inviolable the memory of the masters who did and endured much, in order to leave the arts to us more readily and more clearly. In this dotage of the world, there is not enough vigour left in men's minds to create anything new. Therefore you must cherish with respect what has been transmitted by the masters, God going ahead and showing the way; not only those of you who study medicine, but also those who stand in need of medicine. Since now, and by their own volition, human bodies become weaker than before, tending towards destruction, and are weakened by excessive drinking, which has now become a habit and is not at all considered bad, we all have to recognise the benefits of this art, and give thanks to God the Maker, as it is written: ‘Honour the physician, for God created him for our need’ [Sirach 38:1]. I have spoken.