It is great that awesome scholars such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) get public attention. But it is a shame that it often happens in such a nonfactual and nonsensical fashion. A short thread on some of the inaccuracies in this article. (1/) https://theconversation.com/avicenna-the-persian-polymath-who-shaped-modern-science-medicine-and-philosophy-142667?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=bylinetwitterbutton

caveat: none of this is meant to dismiss the great scholarly work of Ibn Sina. On the contrary, it is to ask to respect his scholarship by (1) actually reading it and (2) interpreting and evaluating it on its own terms, and within the scholarly tradition in which he worked. (2/)

1) let’s look at the author's claim that Ibn Sina "produced an early version of the germ theory of disease in the Canon where he also advocated quarantine to control the transmission of contagious diseases.” (3/)

this one is getting old. Ibn Sina did not produce an early version of germ theory for the very simple fact that he did not have knowledge of such a thing as germs. What he did believe is that bad vapours which dispersed through the breath of patients with certain illnesses.. (4/)

... could be contagious. He did see this as a cause of certain epidemic diseases (smallpox) in addition to the Greek theory of miasma, corrupted air (not through breath). *But* none of these ideas were novel at this time, we already find them in Galen and Qusta ben Luqa. (5/)

Ibn Sina also did not advocate quarantine, the isolation of healthy people. He obviously did recommend people to stay away from people with diseases that he considered to be contagious (not plague). (6/)

This however was already a very old practice which was common in many societies way, way before Ibn Sina’s time, and also discussed by Arabic-writing physicians before Ibn Sina. (7/)

2) Whether Avicenna’s medical experiences were “extensive” is debated in contemporary scholarship. See for instance the work of Cristina Alvarez Millan and Peter E Pormann. None of Ibn Sina’s practical notes survive, (they were claimed to have been lost), ... (8/)

and the Canon actually contains very little references to Ibn Sina’s personal experiences. This is one of the reasons some scholars wonder whether he was more of a theorist than a practitioner. (9/)

This is very unlike the case of, for instance, Al-Razi, of whom many case notes survive and who was considered to be a very skilled medical practitioner, with doubtless expensive medical experience. (10/)

3) “Looking forward to modern notions of disease prevention, Avicenna proposed adjustments in diet and physical exercise could heal or prevent illnesses.” This is true, but... (11/)

...so did almost every physician before him, in the Greek, Indian, and Islamic traditions, so it is no reason to single out Avicenna in this respect and it is not innovative. (12/)

4) “Another innovative aspect of Avicenna’s Canon is its exploration of how our body’s well-being depends on the state of our mind, and the interaction between the heart’s health and our emotional life.” Again, this is not innovative and was a very common idea explored by...13/

many physicians before him. The idea that the body depended on the states of mind we already see in the concept of the non-naturals used by Galen, where he argues that sadness and joy influence health and that anger for instance can cause fever. (14/)

this idea returns in many works of classical Islamic medicine, for instance in al-Razi, before Ibn Sina: “the physician, even though he has his doubts, must always make the patient believe that he will recover, for the state of the body is linked to the state of the mind.” (15/)

5) “Avicenna’s Canon brilliantly synthesises Islamic medicine with that of Hippocrates (460 – 370 BC) and Galen (129 – 200 AD)”. This claim lacks a bit of nuance. Ibn Sina contributed many innovations to Galenic medicine, just as other Arabic-writing physicians before and.. (16/)

after him, but to speak of a brilliant synthesis with Islamic medicine doesn’t do much justice to the medical scholarly tradition at this stage. It is important to ask the question what Islamic medicine in the early 11th century entailed, and how it would have differed from (17/)

the galenic tradition, practiced in its Arabic form (also called Greco-Islamic medicine). This is a discussion that goes beyond this thread, but, put briefly, alongside the Greco-Islamic medical tradition a prophetic medical tradition developed which centred specifically..(18/)

around the medical hadith. One scholar whom you could say engaged in a brilliant synthesis between this prophetic tradition and Greco-Islamic medicine is Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d.1350). See on him and prophetic medicine more broadly the great work of Irmeli Perho. (19/)

The contribution of Avicenna to medicine and philosophy and the importance of the Canon in the Islamic world and Europe was immense. However, the tendency to credit him with all sorts of new ideas erases, in those instances where they are accurate but not in fact new, (20/)

the great contributions of Arabic-writing physicians before him, such as al-Tabari, al-Razi, al-Majusi, and others. And the supposedly new ideas which are neither new nor accurate hijack attention from the great things Ibn Sina did do. For one, he wrote.. (21/)

an incredibly concise and nuanced encylopedia of medicine, in which he articulated and advanced the medical knowledge of his time through his precise philosophical way of thinking, which he did so well that its merits were acknowledged for centuries after it was written. 22/end