The Physician as a Rebellious Intellectual: The Book of the Two Pieces of Advice or Kitāb al-Naṣīḥatayn by ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī (1162–1231), Introduction, Edition and Translation of the Medical Section by N. Peter Joosse ISBN 9783653031270, 3653031273 instant download

The Physician as a Rebellious Intellectual: The Book of the Two Pieces of Advice or Kitāb al-Naṣīḥatayn by ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī (1162–1231), Introduction, Edition and Translation of the Medical Section by N. Peter Joosse ISBN 9783653031270, 3653031273 instant download

The medical section of the Kitab al-Naṣīḥatayn or Book of the Two Pieces of Advice by the medieval author ʿAbd al-Laṭīf ibn Yūsuf al-Baghdādī (1162-1231) challenges the idea that Arabic-Islamic medicine declined after the twelfth century A.D. Moreover, it offers some interesting insights into the social history of medicine. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf composed his work as a diatribe directed against false knowledge, and employed the framework of Greek medical epistemology to criticize the rationalist physicians of his day and age. He argued that female and itinerant practitioners, relying on experience, were superior to some rationalists, and decried the wickedness and incompetence of certain medical practitioners of his time. In addition, he lambasted contemporaneous medical education because it put too much faith in a restricted number of textbooks such as the Canon of Medicine by the celebrated physician Ibn Sina (Avicenna), or chiefly relied on imperfect abridgments. The medical section of the Book of the Two Pieces of Advice is translated here for the first time in a modern language. It is preceded by a lengthy introduction that highlights ʿAbd al-Laṭīf's complicated relation to both medicine and alchemy. The present study also contains the first full bibliography on ʿAbd al-Laṭīf ibn Yūsuf al-Baghdādī and his milieu.