The Unforgettable Surgeon of Andalusia Abu'l-Qasim al-Zahravi
Prof. Dr. Kadircan KESKİNBORA
Bahçeşehir University Faculty of Medicine
After the decision taken at the Council of 1163, the papacy closed all schools related to medicine. While medicine was banned in Medieval Europe, the Islamic world of Europe was taking giant steps and training great doctors in the same era. One of these physicians was Abu'l-Qasim al-Zahrawi. He studied at the University of Cordoba, which had the highest level of science and culture at that time.
Zahrawi is considered the father of Muslim surgeons. He also worked as a palace physician during the reign of Abdurrahman the Third, one of the Andalusian Umayyad caliphs, and during the reign of his successor, Hakem II. Zahrawi, like Ibn ul-Haytham, Biruni and Ibn Sina in the Islamic world, lived in the 11th century. He is among the scientists of the 19th century. Although Zahrawi was interested in various branches of medicine, he was more successful and famous in the field of surgery.
His full name is Ebu'l Kasım Halef İbn el-Abbas el-Zehrâvî and he is known as Albucasis in the West. He was born in Zehra, near Cordoba, in 936. He became one of the most renowned surgeons of the Islamic era; He died in 1013, after a long and fulfilling medical career in which he made rich, meaningful and original contributions.
He had a famous book called "Al-Tasrif", which consists of thirty chapters covering different aspects of medical science. It consists of three volumes on surgery, describing various aspects of surgical treatments based on operations performed by him, including cauterization, excretion of bladder stones, dissection of animals, midwifery, astringents, and eye, ear, and throat surgery. His book, which is a medical encyclopedia, consists of thirty parts (articles), each consisting of various subsections (chapters). In the first article, general medical information and principles, in the second article, 325 diseases from head to feet, their symptoms and treatments, in the third to twenty-fifth articles, simple and complex medicines and their preparations, in the twenty-sixth article, nutrients suitable for each disease, in the twenty-seventh article, herbal and animal products. The properties of foods and simple medicines, the production of mineral, herbal and animal medicine tablets in the twenty-eighth article, drug names, equivalents with the same properties, duration of use, weight and volume measurements in the twenty-ninth article, surgery are discussed in the thirtieth article. Kitâb üt-Tasrîf, which Zahrawi completed in 1000, is largely based on previously published Greek and Islamic medical sources, but it is important in that it gives the results of the scholar-author's personal experiences of nearly fifty years, and stands out especially with its explanations of surgical operations and pictures of the tools it contains. . Kitâb üt-Tasrîf was more influential in the West than in the Islamic world, and many Western physicians quoted from this work. After the thirtieth chapter of the work, especially on surgery, was translated into Latin, manuscript copies spread in Spain, Italy and France. Furthermore, he is well known for his first, original and important discoveries in surgery. He has perfected several delicate operations, including disposing of a dead fetus and amputation.
Al-Tasrif was first translated into Latin by Gherard of Cremona in the Middle Ages. This was followed by several editors in Europe. The book contained numerous diagrams and illustrations of surgical instruments in use or developed by him, and formed part of medical curricula in European countries for several centuries. Contrary to the view that Muslims shy away from surgery, Al-Zahrawi's Al-Tasrif provided an enormous collection for this applied science.
Andalusian surgeon Abu'l-Qasim (d. 1013) enriched medical science with his explanations about hemophilia, which he observed in many cases in a family.
Abu'l-Qasim investigated the diseases of arthritis and spinal tuberculosis 700 years before Percival Pott (1713-1789). Tuberculosis of the spine would later be called "Pott's disease" or "Pott's Disorder", after the Englishman Percival Pott.
Abu'l-Qasim not only made many innovations in surgery, such as cauterizing wounds, breaking down stones in the bladder, and anatomical studies on humans and animals, but he also developed new methods and tools in the field of gynecological diseases, which the Greeks left at a backward level. He found new methods of intervention that aid birth; He also developed new methods in cases where the baby comes standing or breech, in cases of hands or knees, or in cases where he intervenes for the first time and comes with his face. He is the first to say that intervention is necessary if the baby is breech. However, Soranus and those before him strictly avoided this. The baby's breech position is now called the "Walcher Condition" in reference to the Stuttgart gynecologist Walcher (1856-1935), and birth is performed with intervention. Abu'l-Qasim also taught how to remove the stone from the vagina by surgical intervention.
He invented devices that allowed the vagina to be artificially widened, thus greatly facilitating childbirth. Teaches how to treat distortions in the mouth and jaw. He used a hook to remove polyps and performed a successful tracheotomy on one of his servants. The ligation of large vessels, which is thought to have been first done by the great French surgeon Ambroise Pare in 1552, which brought him his enormous fame, was actually discovered by the Arab Abu'l-Qasim, six centuries before the French genius, and thus significantly improved amputations.
Abu'l-Qasim was the first to apply the method of opening a window by cutting the plaster bandage, which he took care to fill with soft materials, to care for the wound in open fractures. He is the one who gave very important and necessary tools to the empty hands of Western surgeons, ophthalmologists and dentists.
He taught budding surgeons different styles of stitches, eight stitches on abdominal wounds, stitches made with two needles and a thread, as well as stitches made with cat intestines, and catgut stitches on intestinal wounds. He recommended that the hips and feet be kept elevated during all wound suturing, especially during surgical interventions in the area below the navel. The West would name this position, which it inherited and implemented from this Muslim scholar-writer, after the successful German surgeon Friedrich Trendelenburg (1844-1924) in the early 20th century. This successful Muslim surgeon is rarely remembered.
RESOURCES
- Sezgin F. Science and Technology in Islam. Volume 4. Istanbul: İBB Kültür A.Ş. Publications. 2008:1-35.
- Istanbul MN. The history of Arabic medicine based on the work of Ibn Abi Usabe'ah. 1203-1270. London: Loughborough University Press. 1981, pp.85-90.