SOURCE: "The Canon of Avicenna," in Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian Universities after 1500, Princeton University Press, 1987, pp. 19-40.

In the following essay, Siraisi outlines the main ideas of Avicenna's Canon of Medicine, focusing on the Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona, and comparing it with its Galenic sources.

The encyclopedic medical work written by Avicenna (d. 1037) is far too lengthy and, as the massiveness of the Latin commentaries on short sections of it testifies, far too complex to be adequately characterized in brief. The following comments are intended only to draw the reader's attention to certain features of the organization and content of the Canon that seem particularly relevant to its reception in the schools of the West and the emergence of a tradition of Latin commentary and, especially, to the adoption of Canon 1.1 as a textbook for the teaching of medical...