The Byzantine stream of Greek medicine had dwindled to a very tiny rill when the fall of Constantinople (1453) dispersed to the West many Greek scholars and many precious manuscripts.

ARABIAN MEDICINE

The third and by far the strongest branch of the Greek river reached the West after a remarkable and meandering course.  The map before you shows the distribution of the Graeco-Roman Christian world at the beginning of the seventh century.  You will notice that Christianity had extended far eastwards, almost to China.  Most of those eastern Christians were Nestorians and one of their important centres was Edessa, whose school of learning became so celebrated.  Here in the fifth century was built one of the most celebrated hospitals of antiquity.

Now look at another map showing the same countries about a century later.  No such phenomenal change ever was made within so short space of time as that which thus altered the map of Asia and Europe at this period.  Within a century, the Crescent had swept from Arabia through the Eastern Empire, over Egypt, North Africa and over Spain in the West, and the fate of Western Europe hung in the balance before the gates of Tours in 732.  This time the barbaric horde that laid waste a large part of Christendom were a people that became deeply appreciative of all that was best in Graeco-Roman civilization and of nothing more than of its sciences.  The cultivation of medicine was encouraged by the Arabs in a very special way.  Anyone wishing to follow the history of the medical profession among this remarkable people will find it admirably presented in Lucien Leclerc’s “Histoire de la medecine arabe” (Paris, 1876).  An excellent account is also given in Freind’s well-known “History of Medicine” (London, 1725-1726).  Here I can only indicate very briefly the course of the stream and its freightage.

With the rise of Christianity, Alexandria became a centre of bitter theological and political factions, the story of which haunts the memory of anyone who was so fortunate as to read in his youth Kingsley’s “Hypatia.”  These centuries, with their potent influence of neoplatonism on Christianity, appear to have been sterile enough in medicine.  I have already referred to the late Greeks, Aetius and Alexander of Tralles.  The last of the Alexandrians was a remarkable man, Paul of AEgina, a great name in medicine and in surgery, who lived in the early part of the seventh century.  He also, like Oribasius, was a great compiler.  In the year 640, the Arabs took Alexandria, and for the third time a great library was destroyed in the “first city of the West.”  Shortly after the conquest of Egypt, Greek works were translated into Arabic, often through the medium of Syriac, particularly certain of Galen’s books on medicine, and chemical writings, which appear to have laid the foundation of Arabian knowledge on this subject.