Excerpts | "Frankish Medicine", by Usama ibn Munqidh
"This man has no idea how to cure these people!"
10.24.23
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From Usama ibn Munqidh's Autobiography (1213). Collected in Arab Historians of the Crusades, by Francesco Gabrielli (1957).
The ruler of Munaitira wrote to my uncle asking him to send a doctor to treat some of his followers who were ill. My uncle sent a Christian called Thabit. After only ten days he returned and we said "You cured them quickly!" This was his story.
They took me to see a knight who had an abscess on his leg, and a woman with consumption. I applied a poultice to the leg, and the abscess opened and began to heal. I prescribed a cleansing and refreshing diet for the woman.
Then there appeared a Frankish* doctor, who said: “This man has no idea how to cure these people!” He turned to the knight and said: “Which would you prefer, to live with one leg or to die with two?” When the knight replied that he would prefer to live with one leg, he sent for a strong man and a sharp axe. They arrived, and I stood by to watch. The doctor supported the leg on a block of wood, and said to the man: “Strike a mighty blow, and cut cleanly!” And there, before my eyes, the fellow struck the knight one blow, and then another, for the first had not finished the job. The marrow spurted out of the leg, and the patient died instantaneously.
Then the doctor examined the woman and said: “She has a devil in her head who is in love with her. Cut her hair off!” This was done, and she went back to eating her usual Frankish food, garlic and mustard, which made her illness worse. “The devil has got into her brain,” pronounced the doctor. He took a razor and cut a cross on her head, and removed the brain so that the inside of the skull was laid bare. This he rubbed with salt; the woman died instantly. At this juncture I asked whether they had any further need of me, and as they had none I came away, having learnt things about medical methods that I never knew before.
*Generic: European
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