Medieval Islamic Medicine

Peter E. Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith's Medieval Islamic Medicine is a standard academic survey by two leading historians of Islamic science, tracing how Greek medical theory was transmitted, translated and substantially developed within the Islamic world from the ninth century onward. Its authority rests on close command of the Arabic medical corpus and on the authors' recognized standing in the history of science field, and it is widely used as a course text precisely for its balance of technical detail and readability. As a survey it covers a wide span of centuries and regions, so it necessarily treats some individual physicians and texts more briefly than a dedicated monograph would, and readers wanting depth on one figure or school are pointed by its own bibliography toward the specialist literature.