Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

inspected at any time without warning after their shops are closed for
the night.’
930–994 AD Haly Abbas (Ali Ibn ‘al-Abbas al-Majusi), author of ‘Kitab-al-Malia’
(Liber Regius) ‘Kitab Kamil al-sina’a al-tibbiyya’ [The complete book
of the medical art] also called ‘Al-Kitab al-Malaki’ [The royal book] It is
one of the most comprehensive and well-organized compendia in
early medical literature. In Europe the treatise was known as ‘Liber
Regius’ or Pantegni and the author as Haly Abbas. He divided his
encyclopaedia into two large books, one on theoretical principles and
the other on practical aspects. Each book had 10 chapters, with
divisions and subdivisions under these, typical of the elaborate
organizational format of medieval Arabic writings. One of the
chapters was on therapy with simple drugs; He says that the patient
should be treated if possible with diet, not with drugs. If he can be
treated with simple drugs he should not be administered compound
ones, nor indeed strange or unknown ones. Opium ‘If one has taken
an overdose of opium, one mithqāl (about 4.25 - 6.20 G) he will show
lockjaw, lethargy, heaviness, and stupor (Hamarneh, 1972).
955–1015 AD There were at least three physicians named ‘Mesue’:
Mesue Major; Yuhanna ibn Masawaih (777–857 AD).of
Jundishapur. He wrote 42 works especially on the eye. His ‘Kitab
al-Nawadir al-Tibbiya’ contained 132 aphorisms including:
Not a physician in the whole world
Escapes death when his time comes.
Strange, isn’t it, that escape it can’t
In spite of drugs that were so good for others.
Obviously death all who with drugs deals
will get. Those who prescribe, those who use,
Those who sell, and those who them import.
(Sterpellone and Elsheikl, 1995)
Mesuè the Younger. He was an Italian physician who had taken
the name of the Pseudo-Mesue, after Mesue Major. Johannes
Mesue, Masawaih al-Hardin of Damascus (924–1015 AD). He wrote
a book on purgatives and emetics ‘De medicins laxativis’
[Concerning laxative medicines] and on the complete
pharmacopoeia in 12 parts called the ‘Antidotarium sive Grabadin
medicamentorum’ [Of antidotes or of Islamic medicines] and ‘De
medicinis universalibus et particularibus’ [About universal and
specific medicines] a book of medicine containing numerous recipes
for jams and sweets written in Latin between the 11th and 12th