A treatise on the small-pox and measles / by Abú Becr Mohammed ibn Zacaríyá ar-Rází (commonly called Rhazes) ; translated from the original Arabic by William Alexander Greenhill.

Razi, Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya, 865?-925?, 865?-925?

Date:: 1848

Credit: A treatise on the small-pox and measles / by Abú Becr Mohammed ibn Zacaríyá ar-Rází (commonly called Rhazes) ; translated from the original Arabic by William Alexander Greenhill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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$p. 16. ancients applied the name <j)\ayfj.ovr] to every thing in ’ which there was inflammation, as the erysipelas, and Small- Pox, and that these diseases were in thei:^ opinion generated from bile.” ^ (2.) If, however, any one says that Galen has not mentioned any peenliar and satisfactory mode of treatment for this disease, nor any complete cause, he is certainly correct; for,^ undess he has done so in some of his works which have not been pub- lished in Arabic, he has made no further mention of it than what we have just cited. As for my own part, I have most carefully inquired of those who use both the Syriac and Greek languages, and have asked them about this matter; hut there was not one of them who could add anything to what I have mentioned; and indeed most of them did not know what he meant by those passages which I have distinctly quoted. This I was much svu’prised at, and also how it was that Galen passed over this disease which occurs so frequently and requires such careful treatment, when he is so eager in flnding out the causes and treatment of other maladies. ’ (3.) As to the moderns, although they have certainly made some mention of the treatment of the SmaU-Pox, (but without much accuracy and distinctness,) yet there is not one of them who has mentioned the cause of the existence of the disease, and how it comes to pass that hardly any one escapes it, or who has disposed the modes of treatment in their right places. And for this reason we hope that the reward of that man who encouraged us to compose this treatise, and also our own, will be doubled, since we have mentioned whatever is necessary for the treatment of this disease, and have arranged and cai’efully disposed every thing in its right place, by GOD’s permission. (4.) We will now begin therefore by mentioning the efficient cause of this distemper, and why hardly any one escapes it; and then we will treat of the other things that relate to it, section by section: and we will (with GOD^s p. 18. * This passage is quoted helow, Cont. $ 56. “ Here and in one or two other places the expression “Per DEUM” has been omitted, because, though perfectly natural and inoffensive in Arabic writers, it could not be used in English without the appearance of irreverence.$