Kitab al-Mujaz fi al-Tibb [A Summary of Medicine].

Tall 8vo (158 x 282 mm). 513 ff. Arabic manuscript on paper. Black script with important words and phrases picked out in red. Circa 17th century covers repaired and rebacked, with modern leather spine. Popular and influential medieval Arabic handbook for medical students by the great Damascus anatomist Ibn al-Nafis (1210-88). Long considered a commentary on Avicenna, it is now viewed by scholarship as an original work which also discusses Avicenna's ideas, and thus as "an independent book meant to be a handbook for medical students and practitioners, not as an epitome of Kitab Al-Qanun of Ibn Sina as thought by recent historians" (Abdel-Halim, 2008). One of the author's most widely received works, it provides a useful sum of medical knowledge to aspiring physicians of the medieval and early modern periods alike. It was still being copied centuries on from the death of Ibn al-Nafis, who is famous for first describing the pulmonary blood circulation, thereby anticipating by many centuries the efforts of William Harvey. - With light worming and paper repairs, minor soiling. - GAL I, 493, 37, 2 & I, 457 (s. v. Ibn Sina). Rabie E. Abdel-Halim, "Contributions of Ibn Al-Nafis (1210-1288 AD) to the Progress of Medicine and Urology. A Study and Translations From his Medical Works", in: Saudi Medical Journal 29.1 (2008), pp. 13-22.