[Anesthesia and resuscitation in Arabo-Islamic medicine: analytic study through Ibn Sina]

Nervous system anatomy knowledge acquired by arabo-islamic physicians enabled them to know its physiology represented by its excitability and its conductibility, and to understand pain physiology. Ibn Sina in his book entitle "The Canon of Medicine" precise anesthetic drugs and their side effects. Among these anesthetic means there were opium and ice. Ibn Sina distinguished organic pain and psychogenic pain. He used sedative and antalgic and soporific drugs in treatment of some psychologic diseases as melancholia. Moslem physicians were the first to use cold water to treat superficial burns. Anesthesia which lead to heavy sleep to used achieve surgical operations by oral, nasal(inhalation) and rectal route as it was described by Ibn Sina who indicated dosage to achieve three or four hour anesthesia which was necessary in an amputation surgery.