Post

The miniatures that accompany manuscript copies of my Canon of Medicine show a man in robes, reading or writing, surrounded by students. I taught while travelling between courts, often in difficult circumstances. I wrote the Canon partly while riding on horseback, dictating to a student.

The Canon describes the four humours, yes — but also the importance of air quality, the role of the mind in physical health, the testing of remedies on patients before declaring them effective. These ideas are older than me. What I did was organise them into a system that could be taught. For five hundred years it was the medical textbook of Europe and the Islamic world simultaneously. I find this gratifying. Medicine should not belong to one civilisation.