The Middle Ages and Renaissance

Galen was the last great philosopher to lend intellectual vitality to the Roman world at a time when the empire was in a state of general decline. Soon the barbarians would be surging into all parts of the crumbling Roman civilization. Paganism was in retreat, and the establishment of Christianity absorbed all the intellectual efforts of those who still had time for such things and were not totally preoccupied with warfare. All scientific culture was disappearing in the western parts of the empire, and it was only in the east that the wealth of knowledge amassed during antiquity was preserved by a different race of men who were caught up in the exuberance of a new culture. Throughout the Middle Ages, it was the Arabs who were the dominant scientists. Starting in the IX^th century, the medical sciences began to flourish, and Hippocrates and Aristotle were translated into vernacular languages. The most famous names from this extraordinary period are El Kindi (860), El Dehadidh - the author of a natural history of animals, Abou Hanifa - a skilled botanist, and Ibn Wahchjid. They blended magic into science and metaphysics. Rhazes (850–923), Avicenne, Avenzoar (1070–1161) and his student, Averrhoes (1120–1198) made the medical profession more respectable, but they were inclined to indulge in speculation at the expense of sound observations. As it was for most scholars at that time, philosophy was more important than knowledge, and, if they helped preserve the scientific tradition of the ancients, they did so without contributing much that was new to anatomy, physiology, or medical diagnosis. They had, however, an extensive knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants, and we owe to them the introduction into therapeutic medicine of a great number of medicines. Kazwyny (1283), Ibn el Doreihim, El Demiri (who lived in the XIV^th century), El Calcachendi (1418), El Schebi, and El Sojuti (1445) wrote remarkable treatises on animals and described their principal traits. El Demiri wrote a kind of dictionary of natural history that included descriptions of 931 animals.