Overview

During the Middle Ages, Arabic medicine developed and filled a major gap left by the fifth-century collapse of the Roman empire in the West. At first Islamic physicians sought to preserve knowledge by collecting, then translating, the classical Greco-Roman medicine that Europe had lost. Then they began adding information from other cultures, giving their own comments and interpretations. Arab physicians laid the foundations of modern medicine as well as that of important medical institutions.

Background

After the collapse of the Roman empire, very little knowledge of Greek medical science was available in the West. The Church became the center of society and greatly influenced the development, or stagnation, of medicine in the West. The Church made no pretense of its mission, which was to minister to the...