[The Canon medicinae by Avicenna, a work and its times]

The written words of ancient times are still here for us to read and try to understand. Through the study of these words, we are able to see and hear the people hiding behind them. The pre-requisite for this to happen is to have knowledge of the time in which the words that we study were written down. With this assumption I went into studying "Canon Medicinae" by Avicenna. Written in the eleventh century A.D. It is one of the grandest and most known works on medicine produced in the medieval sphere of islamic culture. In this essay I would like to give an insight into some of my observations and thoughts regarding the Canon and the context in which it is written. The basis of this study has been partly, until now, untranslated parts of one of the many versions in latin of the work which emerged in Europe well beyond the sixteenth century. The study is concentrated on those parts of Canon Medicinae dealing with uroscopy, urology and nephrology. This essay tries to give a picture of the cultural and scientific milieu which surrounded Avicenna and to come closer to the major ideas about disease; their cause, diagnostics, impact on man and cure, as represented in Canon Medicinae. The influence of Galen and the humoral pathology is obvious in Avicenna's work but there is also an interesting interaction between that influence and the traditional arabic medicine and islamic thinking, which I would like to introduce the readers to. Canon Medicinae also gives some answers about the relationship between the physician and the patient and a picture of the "avicennian" doctor which one can relate to present time.