Avicenna's Heart Medicine

If any of you are interested in the subject of medieval medicine, you may find the journal article on Avicenna's cardiology to be fun reading.
The mentioned concept is now recognized as “drug targeting” in current medicinal sciences and is an important challenge and field of research in pharmacy. Drug targeting has its starting point just a few decades ago. whereas Avicenna considered the strategy 1000 year ago.
One of the assumptions we tend to make is that we don't need to go back to the old thinkers, at least on scientific or technical issues, because we've incorporated their learning into our own superior work. However, it's usually true that we haven't fully incorporated everything -- there remain important models and ways of thought that didn't get picked up and carried along, but which are there waiting for us to simply rediscover. It's still worth reading Avicenna on medicine, as it's still worth reading Abelard on formal logic and Plato on almost everything.

No comments: