Arabic in the Sciences
Ten Treatises on the Eye
العشر مقالات في العين
Hunayn ibn Ishaq's Ten Treatises on the Eye is the oldest surviving comprehensive textbook of eye medicine. It entered Latin twice and circulated in Europe for centuries under the names of the translator-monk Constantine the African and of the Greek physician Galen, until the German ophthalmologist Julius Hirschberg restored it to its author in 1903.
- Author
- Hunayn ibn Ishaq (Johannitius) (d. 873)
- Field
- Medicine
- Arabic title
- كتاب حنين بن إسحاق في تركيب العين وعللها وعلاجها، عشر مقالات
- Latin title
- Liber de oculis Constantini Africani; Galeni liber de oculis a Demetrio translatus
Europe knew it under a name not its author's.
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Sources
- Max Meyerhof, The Book of the Ten Treatises on the Eye ascribed to Hunain ibn Is-hâq (Cairo, 1928), introduction
- Wellcome Collection: Omnia opera Ysaac (Lyon, 1515), with «Liber De oculis Constantini»
- Aaron M. Butts, «Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq», Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage
- موسوعة تاريخ العلوم العربية، إشراف رشدي راشد: ديفيد ليندبرغ، «علم البصريّات في الغرب»، ج٢ ص٩١٣؛ ودانيال جاكار، ج٣ ص١٢٤٨–١٢٥٥
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