A Review Article About Some Herbs Affecting Vitiligo Based on Avicenna's Canon.

BACKGROUND: Vitiligo is a pigmentary disorder characterizing by white macules due to loss of melanocytes. Vitiligo affects about 1 to 4% of people around the world. The treatment of vitiligo has a high cost and the long process of treatment in spite of no complete remedy. It has various psychological side-effects such as depression and anxiety affecting the quality of life seriously. Avicenna in his Canon treated these patients over a thousand years ago. This study aimed to introduce some herbal drugs in vitiligo based on the Canon of Avicenna besides the conventional medical treatments. METHODS: This is a review study, according to the Canon with the term Baras and also searching through the electronic websites with the keywords vitiligo, treatment, and herbal drugs. RESULTS: The study found some herbs affecting the vitiligo from the Canon. CONCLUSION: The researchers suggest conducting clinical trials on the patients with vitiligo based on the Canon besides the conventional techniques to obtain a better result in the treatment.

The Discourse of Medicine in the Cahar Maqala (Four Discourses) of Nezami Aruzi of Samarghand.

Nezami Aruzi prepared Cahar Maqala (Four Discourses) as a guide and admonishment for the rulers and kings. The fourth discourse of Cahar Maqala with 12 anecdotes is devoted to the science of medicine and the characteristics of the physicians. The discourse presents the name of the eminent scientists, physicians, as well as Farsi and Arabic medical books that had professional acceptance in the medieval in Persia. The author has described how medicine was studied in the medieval in Persia and has presented notes on the physiology of the nervous system, pulse, uroscopy, fever, spiritual affairs and medical ethics. The current essay is a brief review of the medical subjects in Cahar Maqala.

Discourse on pulse in medieval Persia--the Hidayat of Al-Akhawayni (?-983 A D.).

In a period of compilation, original observations and expansion (900-1100 A.D.), Persians described new clinical manifestations of the diseases and expanded the earlier knowledge of materia medica. In the epoch of the Arabic language domination in the scientific literature of this period, advent of medical authors to write in Farsi shined in the Persian principalities. Akhawayani Bokhari was by far the most outstanding scholar of the time who wrote one of the earliest pandects of medicine of the period, the Hidayat al-Mutallimin fi al-Tibb (Learner's Guide to Medicine) in new Persian. The Hidayat is a relatively short and simplified digest of medicine at the time providing a glimpse of high level of medical education at the Samanid period (819-999). The present article is a translation of the sections of the Hidayat related to the pulse and its characters and conditions affecting the pulse in an attempt to increase our knowledge of the medicine, and particularly the pulse examination throughout the medieval era.

Avicenna's (Ibn Sina) the Canon of Medicine and saffron (Crocus sativus): a review.

In this review, we introduce the traditional uses of saffron and its pharmacological activities as described by either Avicenna in Book II, Canon of Medicine (al-Qanun fi al-tib) or from recent scientific studies. Modern pharmacological findings on saffron are compared with those mentioned in Avicenna's monograph. A computerized search of published articles was performed using MEDLINE, Scopus and Web of Science databases as well as local references. The search terms used were saffron, Crocus sativus, crocin, crocetin, safranal, picrocrocin, Avicenna and 'Ibn Sina'. Avicenna described various uses of saffron, including its use as an antidepressant, hypnotic, anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotective, bronchodilatory, aphrodisiac, inducer of labour, emmenagogue and others. Most of these effects have been studied in modern pharmacology and are well documented. The pharmacological data on saffron and its constituents, including crocin, crocetin and safranal, are similar to those found in Avicenna's monograph. This review indicates that the evaluation of plants based on ethnobotanical information and ancient books may be a valuable approach to finding new biological activities and compounds.

Plastic incunabula -- a tale of Carpue's Tagliacozzi's.

Carpue's An Account of Two Successful Operations caused the rebirth of plastic surgery in 1816 over 200 years after the first plastic surgery book was written by Tagliacozzi. Tagliacozzi's book was pirated with both authorized edition and unauthorized editions having been published in 1597. In his book, Carpue reviewed the literature including Tagliacozzi's work. Carpue had Charles Turner, engraver-in-ordinary to the King prepare his books illustrations. Comparing Turner's engraving with those in the original and pirated editions of Tagliacozzi's book shows that Turner duplicated the pirated edition. The author discovered a pirated edition at St. Bartholomew's Medical College Library in 1971 that was signed by Carpue and shows how by comparing the illustrations in it with those in Carpue's book that this was the working copy used by Turner. In 1819 Carpue gave this book to a "B. Turner Jr." who probably was Turner's teenage son who later became a surgeon. In 2011 the author discovered an authorized version of Tagliacozzi's book signed by Carpue at the Lilly Library in Indiana. These books are important links in the history of plastic surgery.

[Not Available]. / Das Flugblatt des Nrnberger Arztes Theodoricus Ulsenius von 1496.

In the following contribution the relevant aspects of the broadsheet of the municipial physician from Nuremberg Theodoricus Ulsenius of 1496 are represented. The broadsheet attracted the attention of the history of art because of the wood-cut, attributed to Durer, and became famous as the so-called Picture of the Plague-Stricken Man. The history of medicine on the other hand identifies the unknown new disease, described by Ulsenius in the latin text, as an early description of syphillis. To men at the turn of the 16th century, this disease appeared as an expression of divine wrath. The Renaissance medical science, influenced by the philosophy of Neo-Platonism, explained its orgin as the consequence of a cosmological constellation. Apart from this the broadsheet as an incunabulum has some relevance for the history of early letter-press printing, of which Nuremberg with its circles of artists and scholars represented an important centre.

[2 new finds in the old German delivery of the rosemary treatise]. / Zwei Neufunde zur altdeutschen Uberlieferung des Rosmarintraktats.

Rosemary monographs are known in three versions. In two of these, wine is the basic ingredient of the remedies. Texts in the third group comprise medicines, in which all the different parts of the plant are used. This group is represented by a Dutch text of 29 paragraphs and two shorter German ones, which are here compared to the Dutch text.

[The Anonymus Londinensis and medicine of South Italy]. / L'Anonyme de Londres et la médecine d'Italie du Sud.

Can the five doctors from Southern Italy and Sicily, whose theories are described in the famous Anonymus Londinensis (P. Lond. 137), be said to have belonged to an actual 'school of medicine'? Although this article stops short of such a conclusion, it is indicated that, positioned on the fringe of the West's scientific world, they remained aloof from the new medicine, embodied by Hippocrates.