Albucasis is the Latinized name of the Hispano-Arabic physician-surgeon Abu Al-Qasim al-Zahrawi. He was born in Muslim Spain in El-Zahra, a little village near Cordoba, in the year 936. He became an important member of the Cordovan center of Islam and was highly esteemed as a physician and as a very able surgeon.
He was an active practitioner who was said to have left his doors open day and night and whose courtyard was reputed to have been perennially overflowing with the poor patients for whom he cared as a charitable obligation.
In his introduction, Albucasis complained that surgery had almost completely disappeared as a specialty in Spain. Proficient surgeons could no longer be found as a result of the absence of anatomical knowledge; dissection indeed was prohibited.
Al-Tasrif was completed in AD 1000 and reflected Albucasis’s nearly 50 years of study and practice.
One feature of this book is the large number of illustrations of surgical instruments which, together with the descriptive text, serve to clarify the operative techniques he described.
The volume of the Al-Tasrif was dedicated to surgery and was divided into three parts: first part, the use of cautery: second part; lithotomy, wound care and amputation for gangrene and the third with fractures and dislocation, including an excellent description of paralysis from spinal trauma.
The book was translated into Latin in the 12th century by Gerard of Cremona, and became a work of central value to surgery in Western Europe during the Middle Ages.
The Collection (Al-Tasrif) by Albucasis
