Alcmaeon of Croton

Among the first physicians and physiologists at the pre-Hippocratic medicine with contradictions and oscillating doctrines was Alcmaeon from Croton in the 6th century BC. For many, he shared as the father of scientific medicine.

Alcmaeon have been a student of Pythagoras and have been born around 510 BC. His father was Peirithus or Perithus. He was most probably born at Croton; at all events he lived in that city for a number of years.

Croton, which he came from, was a scientific metropolis of excellent medical school, run by Alcmaeon for some time To this city – Democedes (one of the most famous doctors in Hellas) arrived to practice medicine for five years.

Alcmaeon developed activity mainly in the area of medicine and natural philosophy with Pythagorean affinity.

Multifaceted thinker, he improved the medicine offering a new point of view to understand the mechanisms determining the health status and the disease. He dealt a variety of physiology issues about the sleep, diet, death, and pregnancy.

In ancient time he was considered as a father of anatomy, which is proof of his very knowledgeable.

Alcmaeon writings are naturalistic, astronomical, psychological and biological. Diogenes Laertius remarks that the contents of his books are for the most part medical, although he also wrote on nature. Fragment II of the present collection contains the opening of one of Alemaeon's books and suggests also the title.
Alcmaeon of Croton

Plistonicus: Student of Praxagoras

Plistonicus was one of the 'classics' of Greek medicine in the so-called Dogmatic tradition. He was a pupil of Praxagoras but his home town is not recorded.

He appears to have written a work on Anatomy, which is several times mentioned by Galen. Galen generally refers to him in conjunction with Praxagoras and others of the Dogmatic persuasion.

Few fragments of Plistonicus, another pupil of Praxagoras, have survived. One of them indicates the persistence of the belief that the digestion of food was related to putrefaction.

Other views associated with him are that air enters the arteries not only from the heart but also from the whole body and that water is preferable to wine as an aid to digestion.
Plistonicus: Student of Praxagoras

Phylotimus of Cos

The Greek scholar Phylotimus (or Philotimos) was a pupil of Praxagoras of Cos. In Arabic he was called Fulutimus, Fulatis, or Falatis, and he is cited by several Arabic sources as an authority on foodstuffs.

Phylotimus of Cos. Physician and chief magistrate of Cos in the first half of the 3rd cent. BC; along with Herophilus.

As a pupil of Praxagoras and he became one of the classic authorities of Greek medicine, although only fragments of his writings now survive.

Phylotimus is the pupil most often mentioned with Praxagoras and he seems to have been the most famous of Praxagoras’ students besides Herophilus.

Galen reports that Praxagoras and his student Phylotimus believe that the brain is only an outgrowth of the spinal column, with no particular connection to the rational powers.
Phylotimus of Cos

Constantinus Africanus (1010 – 1087)

A physician from Tunis, he was originally a merchant, who apparently visited Salerno. In Salerno, he came in contact with some physician and became interested in medicine, he then returned to Africa and studied medicine.

According to his own story, during which time he acquired thirty years travelling in Egypt and the East during which time he acquired many medical and other works.

At the end of the 11th century Constantinus Africanus assembled a school translators who help bring the philosophical medicine back into the Latin-speaking world.

Constantinus’s translation of Arabic medical texts into Latin gave the west a number of important works. These formed the foundation of modern science and biology. He was a much cited authority from the twelve until sixteenth century and his translations were widely circulated.

Chief of these was the surgical part of Kitab al-Maliki (The Royal Book) of Ali ibn al-Abbas, which Stephen of Antioch translated as Regalis disposition.

These writings in Latin formed the basis of the curriculum of the School of Salerno, the first medical university in the West.
Constantinus Africanus (1010 – 1087)

Dioscorides (AD 40 - 90)

Pedanius Dioscorides was born in Anazarbus which was part of the Roman province of Cilicia.

He was a Greek surgeon who served in Emperor Nero’s (AD 54-68) Roman Army and who, in the course of his military travels, complied what some consider to be the best description of medical botany to his name.

His great herbal was probably written around 60-78 BC, and mentioned 850 plants, animals, and minerals with discussion of their medical and non-medical uses.

De Materia Medica described more than 600 plants with medical uses, 90 of which are still in use. As an army physician, Dioscorides concentrated on soldier’s medicine, particularly wounds. But De Materia Medica also included a great deal of herbal folk wisdom.

De Materia Medica remained a standard reference for centuries and until the early 1600s, books on medical botany were little more than commentaries on Discorides’s work.

Until his classification was supplanted by that of Carolus Linnaeus in the 18th century, he stood as the foremost authority on pharmacy for more than sixteen hundred years.

He was recognized not only by later Roman and Byzantium writers but also by Islamic scholars.
Dioscorides (AD 40 - 90)

Ibnu Bajjah

Ibnu Bajjah or Avempace or Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Yahya al-Saigh was born in Saragossa in 500 AH/1099 AD. He was highly influential in medicine, philosophy and mathematics.

He was a celebrated Spanish Muslim scholar, commentator of Aristotle, scientist, poet and musician.

He was a creative and iconoclastic thicker, an instigator of the ‘Andalusia revolt’, who operated an observatory on his own and made original contribution to physical theory, with his account of projectile motion.

His thoughts greatly influenced Averroes (Ibnu Rushd).

He practiced as a physician in his native city but after the fall of Saragossa in 513 AH to the Christians he resided in Seville and Xatina.

Later he went to Fez in Morocco where he was made at the Almoravid court. Ibnu Bajjah’s most celebrated work is Tadbir al-Mutawahhid, Regime of the Solitary which he left unfinished.

He passed away in 533 AH/1139 AD.
Ibnu Bajjah