(Abu Ali al-Hussein ibn Abdallah ibn Sina). Canon [Medical Encyclopedia]. Translated from Arabic to Hebrew by Nathan of Cento (HaMe'ati)

AVICENNA

Azriel ben Joseph Aschkenazi Gunzenhauser

Naples

1491-92

FIRST EDITION. Five volumes. Double columns. Marginalia in various Hebrew Ashkenazic and Sephardic hands plus some Latin

Vinograd, Naples 26; Goff 4; Goldstein 74; Offenberg 6; Steinschneider, p. 767, no. 4486-1; Thes. A71; Wineman Cat. 41; Friedenwald, p. 45. Not in Cambridge University

THE ONLY 15th-CENTURY MEDICAL BOOK IN HEBREW. Ibn Sina, or Avicenna as he was referred to in the West (980-1037), was one of the greatest physicians and philosophers of the Muslim world. In the latter realm he would exert a profound influence on Maimonides. Avicenna wrote a work on cardiology, al-Adwiya al-Qalbiyya (“On Remedies for the Heart”), but by far, his most important contribution to the field of medicine is this work: Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (“Canon of Medicine”), which was translated into Hebrew by Nathan HaMe'ati in 1279. In this truly encyclopedic undertaking, Avicenna drew on the earlier writings of the Greeks Hippocrates and Galen, and upon his own empirical observations. The five parts of the Canon were published in Naples in 1491-92 as a set of three volumes. The contents range from common ailments to life-threatening diseases, and provide an extensive pharmacopeia. The Canon remained one of the basic works of instruction in European medical schools until the beginning of the 16th-century. See S.M. Afnan, Avicenna, His Life and Works(1958); N. Berger ed., Jews and Medicine (1995), p. 56; EJ, Vol. III, cols. 955-960 The Canon is somewhat notorious among bibliographers due to the difficuly in presenting a precise collation of the work. No consensus seems to exist