been able to repeat the whole Koran by heart at the age of ten years. Ali gave him for a master Abou-Abdallah-Annatholi, who taught him grammar, dialectics, the geometry of Euclid, and the astronomy of Ptolemy. But Avicenna quitted his tuition because he could not give him the solution of a problem in logic. He attached himself to a merchant, who taught him arithmetic, and made him acquainted with the Indian numerals from which our own are derived. He then undertook a journey to Bagdad, where he studied philosophy under the great Peripatician, Abou-Nasr-Alfarabi, a disciple of Mesue the elder. At the same time he applied himself to medicine, under the tuition of the Nestorian, Abou-Sahel-Masichi. He informs us himself that he applied with an extraordinary ardour to the study of the sciences. He was in the habit of drinking great quantities of liquids during the night, to prevent him from sleeping; and he often obtained in a dream a solution of those problems at which he had laboured in vain while he was awake. When the difficulties to be surmounted appeared to him too great, he prayed to God to communicate to him a share of his wisdom; and these prayers, he assures us, were never offered in vain. The metaphysics of Aristotle was the only book which he could not comprehend, and after reading them over forty times, he threw them aside with great anger at himself.
Already, at the age of sixteen, he was a physician of eminence; and at eighteen he performed a brilliant cure on the calif Nuhh, which gave him such celebrity that Mohammed, Calif of Chorazan, invited him to his palace; but Avicenna rather chose to reside at Dschordschan, where he cured the nephew of the calif Kabus of a grievous distemper.
Afterwards he went to Ray, where he was appointed physician to Prince Magd-Oddaula. Here he composed a dictionary of the sciences. Sometime after this he was raised to the dignity of vizier at Hamdan; but he was speedily deprived of his office and thrown into prison for having favoured a sedition. While incarcerated he wrote many works on medicine and philosophy. By-and-by he was set at liberty, and restored to his dignity; but after the death of his protector, Schems-Oddaula, being afraid of a new attempt to deprive him of his liberty, he took refuge in the house of an apothecary, where he remained long concealed and completely occupied with his literary labours. Being at last discovered he was thrown into the castle of Berdawa, where he was confined for four months. At the end of that time a fortunate accident enabled him to make his escape, in the disguise of a monk. He repaired to Ispahan, where he lived much respected at the court of the calif Ola-Oddaula. He did not live to a great age, because he had worn out his constitution by too free an indulgence of women and wine. Having been attacked by a violent colic, he caused eight injections, prepared from long pepper, to be thrown up in one day. This excessive use of so irritating a remedy, occasioned an excoriation of the intestines, which was followed by an attack of epilepsy. A journey to Hamdan, in company with the calif, and the use of mithridate, into which his servant by mistake had put too much opium, contributed still further to put an end to his life. He had scarcely arrived at the town when he died in the fifty-eighth year of his age, in the year 1036.
Avicenna was the author of the immense work entitled “Canon,” which was translated into Latin, and for five centuries constituted the great standard, the infallible guide, the confession of faith of the medical world. All medical knowledge was contained in it; and nothing except what was contained in it was considered by medical men as of any importance. When we take a view of the Canon, and compare it with the writings of the Greeks, and even of the Arabians, that preceded it, we shall find some difficulty in accounting for the unbounded authority which he acquired over the medical world, and for the length of time during which that authority continued.
But it must be remembered, that Avicenna’s reign occupies the darkest and most dreary period of the history of the human mind. The human race seems to have been asleep, and the mental faculties in a state of complete torpor. Mankind, accustomed in their religious opinions to obey blindly the infallible decisions of the church, and to think precisely as the church enjoined them to think, would naturally look for some means to save them the trouble of thinking on medical subjects; and this means they found fortunately in the canons of Avicenna. These canons, in their opinion, were equally infallible with the decisions of the holy father, and required to be as implicitly obeyed. The whole science of medicine was reduced to a simple perusal of Avicenna’s Canon, and an implicit adherence to his rules and directions.
When we compare this celebrated work with the medical writings of the Greeks, and even of the Arabians, the predecessors of Avicenna, we shall be surprised that it contains little or nothing which can be considered as original; the whole is borrowed from the writings of Galen, or Ætius, or Rhazes: scarcely ever does he venture to trust his own wings, but rests entirely on the sagacity of his Greek and Arabian predecessors. Galen is his great guide; or, if he ever forsake him, it is to place himself under the direction of Aristotle.
The Canon contains a collection of most of the valuable information contained in the writings of the ancient Greek physicians, arranged, it must be allowed, with great clearness. The Hhawi of Razes is almost as complete; but it wants the lucidus ordo which distinguishes the Canon of Avicenna. I conceive that the high reputation which Avicenna acquired, was owing to the care which he bestowed upon his arrangement. He was undoubtedly a man of abilities, but not of inventive genius. There is little original matter in the Canon. But the physicians in the west, while Avicenna occupied the medical sceptre, had no opportunity of judging of the originality of their oracle, because they were unacquainted with the Greek language, and could not therefore consult the writings of Galen or Ætius, except through the corrupt medium of an Arabian version.
But it is not the medical reputation of Avicenna that induced me to mention his name here. Like all the Arabian physicians, he was also a chemist; and his chemical tracts having been translated into Latin, and published in Western Europe, we are enabled to judge of their merit, and to estimate the effect which they may have had upon the progress of chemistry. The first Latin translation of the chemical writings of Avicenna was published at Basil in 1572; they consist of two separate books; the first, under the name of “Porta Elementorum,” consists of a dialogue between a master and his pupil, respecting the mysteries of Alchymy. He gives an account of the four elements, fire, air, water, earth, and gives them their usual qualities of dry, moist, hot, and cold. He then treats of air, which, he says, is the food of fire, of water, of honey, of the mutual conversion of the elements into each other; of milk and cheese, of the mixture of fire and water, and that all things are composed of the four elements. There is nothing in this tract which has any pretension to novelty; he merely retails the opinions of the Greek philosophers.
The other treatise is much larger, and professes to teach the whole art of alchymy; it is divided into ten parts, entitled “Dictiones.” The first diction treats of the philosopher’s stone in general; the second diction treats of the method of converting light things into heavy, hard things into soft; of the mutation of the elements; and of some other particulars of a nature not very intelligible. The third diction treats of the formation of the elixir; and the same subject is continued in the fourth.
The fifth diction is one of the most important in the whole treatise; it is in general intelligible, which is more than can be said of those that precede it. This diction is divided into twenty-eight chapters: the first chapter treats of copper, which, he says, is of three kinds; permenian copper, natural copper, and Navarre copper. But of these three varieties he gives no account whatever; though he enlarges a good deal on the qualities of copper—not its properties, but its supposed medicinal action. It is hot and dry, he says, but in the calx of it there is humidity. His account of the composition of copper is the same with that of Geber.
The second chapter treats of lead, the third of tin, and in the remaining chapters he treats successively of brass, iron, gold, silver, marcasite, sulphuret of antimony, which is distinguished by the name of alcohol; of soda, which he says is the juice of a plant called sosa. And he gives an unintelligible process by which it is extracted from that plant, without mentioning a syllable about the combustion to which it is obvious that it must have been subjected.
In the twelfth chapter he treats of saltpetre, which, he says, is brought from Sicily, from India, from Egypt, and from Herminia. He describes
