Early Life:
The well-known Muslim scientist Abū al-Qāsim al-Zahrāwī, also spelled Abul Kasim, in full Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn ʿAbbās al-Zahrāwī, Latin Albucasis, was born in 936, near Córdoba Spain. He had his origin from the Medinan tribe of Al-Ansar. He lived most of his life in Cordoba. It is also where he studied, taught, and practiced medicine and surgery. He was a medieval surgeon of Andalusian Spain, whose comprehensive medical text, combining Middle Eastern and Greco-Roman classical teachings, shaped European surgical procedures until the Renaissance.
The Surgical Man
Al-Zahrawi remained the greatest surgical man. He specialized in curing disease by cauterization. And invented several devices used during surgery, for purposes such as inspection of the interior of the urethra. He also used surgical devices in applying and removing foreign bodies from the throat, the ear, and other body organs. The man of cure is ranked as the first to illustrate the various cannulae and the first to treat a wart with an iron tube and caustic metal as a boring instrument. He had performed laryngotomy on a slave girl without any experience but became successful and called it not dangerous.
Moreover, Al-Zahrawi is also considered to be pioneered neurosurgery and neurological diagnosis. He is known to have performed surgical treatments of head injuries, skull fractures, spinal injuries, hydrocephalus, subdural effusions, and headache. Al-Zahrawi had given the first clinical description of an operative procedure for hydrocephalus. And clearly described the evacuation of superficial intracranial fluid in hydrocephalic children. Other than this he had written a complete code of surgical conduct that is used by modern surgeons. He had made many surgical tools that became the base for the development of advanced tools.
His Book Kitab al-Tasrif
Al-Zahrawi’s Kitab al-Tasrif is a medical encyclopedia comprised of thirty volumes that he completed in the year 1000. It covered a broad range of medical topics, including surgery, medicine, orthopedics, ophthalmology, pharmacology, nutrition, dentistry, childbirth, and pathology. The first volume in the encyclopedia is concerned with general principles of medicine, the second with pathology, while much of the rest discuss topics regarding pharmacology and drugs. The last treatise and the most celebrated one is about surgery. Al-Zahrawi stated that he chose to discuss the surgery in the last volume because surgery is the highest form of medicine, and one must not practice it until he becomes well-acquainted with all other branches of medicine.
The work contained data that had accumulated during a career that spanned almost 50 years of training, teaching, and practice. In it, he also wrote of the importance of a positive doctor-patient relationship and wrote affectionately of his students, whom he referred to as “my children”. He also emphasized the importance of treating patients irrespective of their social status. He encouraged the close observation of individual cases in order to make the most accurate diagnosis and the best possible treatment.
The wise surgeon once said about anatomy: “Before practicing surgery one should gain knowledge of anatomy and the function of organs so that he will understand their shape, connections, and borders. He should become thoroughly familiar with nerves muscles bones arteries and veins. If one does not comprehend anatomy and physiology one can commit a mistake that will result in the death of the patient. I have seen someone incise into a swelling in the neck thinking it was an abscess when it was an aneurysm and the patient dying on the spot.”
In short, he had given complete documentation and procedure along with a description. He has made the world of surgery.
