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In spite of his friendship with the Moorish King and with Avenzoar, he fell under the suspicion of free thinking and was brought to trial with a number of personal friends, who occupied high positions in the Moorish government. He escaped with his life, but only after great risks, and he was banished to a suburb of Cordova, in which only Jews were allowed to live.
The illustrious pupil of Avenzoar, Averrhoes, who died in 1198 A.D., was the last of the great Arabian physicians who, by rational conception of medicine, attempted to stem the flood of superstition that was overwhelming medicine. For a time he succeeded; but at last the Moslem theologians prevailed, and he was degraded and banished to a town inhabited only by the despised Jews.
If the flow be bilious, treat the patient with syrup of maiden-hair; epithynium, polypody, borage, buglos, fumitary, hart's tongue and syrups, bisantius, which must be made without vinegar, else it will assist the disease instead of nature, for melancholy is increased by the use of vinegar, and both Hippocrates, Silvius and Avenzoar reject it as injurious for the womb, and therefore not to be used internally in uterine diseases.
A more complete list, with the titles of the books, may be found in Haller's "Bibliotheca Anatomica." Another of the distinguished Arabian physicians was Avenzoar the transformation of his Arabic family name, Ibn-Zohr. He was probably born in Penaflor, not far from Seville. He died in Seville in 1162 at the age, it is said, of ninety-two years.
His intimate relations with other great physicians of the time, and in particular his close friendship with Avenzoar, enabled him to get abundant medical information in faultless order so far as knowledge then went, but his theoretic speculations, instead of helping medicine, as he thought they would, and as philosophers have always been inclined to think as regards their theoretic contributions, were not only not of value, but to some extent at least hindered human progress by diverting men from the field of observation to that of speculation.
Among the distinguished contributors to medicine at this time, though more a philosopher than a physician, is the famous Averroës, whose full Arabic name among his contemporaries was Abul-Welid Mohammed Ben Ahmed Ibn Roschd el-Maliki. Like Avenzoar, of whom he was the intimate personal friend, and Abulcasis and Maimonides, he was born in the south of Spain.
After Rhazes, the most important contributors to medical literature from among the Arabs, with the single exception of Avicenna, were born in Spain. They are Albucasis or Abulcasis, the surgeon; Avenzoar, the physician, and Averroës, the philosophic theorist in medicine. Besides, it may be recalled here that Maimonides, the great Jewish physician, was born and educated at Cordova, in Spain.
Undoubtedly he did much to usher in that enthusiasm for education and study which characterized the next centuries, the eleventh and twelfth, at Cordova in Spain, when such men as Avenzoar, Avicenna, and Averroës attracted the attention of the educational world of the time.
The Western Caliphate produced physicians and philosophers almost as brilliant as those of the East. Remarkable schools of medicine were founded at Seville, Toledo and Cordova. The most famous of the professors were Averroes, Albucasis and Avenzoar. Albucasis was "the Arabian restorer of surgery."
Jewish writers have sometimes claimed one of the most distinguished of these, Avenzoar himself, as a Jew, but Hyrtl and other good authorities consider him of Arabic extraction and point to the fact that his ancestors bore the name of Mohammed. This is not absolutely conclusive evidence, but because of it I have preferred to class Avenzoar among the Arabian physicians.
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