Public Health

Public Health

Published: 2002

The earliest hospital in Islam was a mobile dispensary that followed Muslim armies, dating to the time of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), a tradition that continued throughout Islamic civilization.

Decades elapsed before the first hospital building was built in Damascus in 706 by Al-Walid, the Umayyad Caliph. It treated all kinds of patients (including the blind and even lepers). Its equipment, staff, and organization served as a model for other hospitals.

Both Caliphs Harun al-Rashid and Al-Mansur had hospitals built in Baghdad. In Cairo, Ibn Tulun, the city’s governor, established the first hospital at al-Fustat in 872. By the 12th century, al-Nuri says the hospital had become a highly advanced institution. Nur al-Din Zangi built a hospital in 1156, where patients were well fed and cared for, and a large library supported teaching.

Old Public Hospital Egypt

In Cairo, in 1285, Sultan Qalaun al-Mansur built the largest of all hospitals, described Durant,

“Within a spacious quadrangular enclosure, four buildings rose around a courtyard adorned with arcades and cooled with fountains and brooks. Separate wards housed patients with diverse diseases and convalescents; laboratories, a dispensary, out-patient clinics, diet kitchens, baths, a library, a chapel, a lecture hall, and charming accommodations for the insane. They treated men and women, rich and poor, slave and free, gratis, and gave each convalescent a sum of money on his departure so he need not return to work at once. The sleepless were provided with soft music, professional story-tellers, and perhaps books of history.”

What is Taught: The Italian Giovanni Morgagni is regarded as the father of pathology because he was the first to describe the disease’s nature correctly.
What Should be Taught: Islam’s surgeons were the first pathologists. They fully realized the nature of the disease and described a variety of diseases in modern detail. Ibn Zuhr accurately described pleurisy, tuberculosis, and pericarditis.

What is Taught: The concept of quarantine was first developed in 1403. In Venice, a law was passed that prevented strangers from entering the city until a set waiting period had passed. If no signs of illness were found by then, they were allowed in.
Ibn Zuhr
What Should be Taught: The concept of quarantine was first introduced in the 7th century A.D. by the Prophet Muhammad, who wisely warned against entering or leaving a region suffering from a plague. As early as the 10th century, Muslim physicians innovated isolation wards for individuals suffering from communicable diseases.

What is Taught: A German, Johann Weger, developed the first sound approach to treating disease in the 1500s.
Ibn al-Razi
What Should Be Taught: Harvard’s George Sarton says modern medicine is entirely an Islamic development and that, setting the Record Straight, Muslim physicians from the 9th through the 12th centuries were precise, scientific, rational, and sound in their approach.

Johann Weger was one of thousands of European physicians from the 15th through the 17th centuries who were taught ar-Razi and Ibn Sina’s medicine. He contributed nothing original.

What is Taught: Philippe Pinel modernized medical treatment for the insane when, in 1793, he opened France’s first asylum for the insane https://indianpharmall.com/.
What Should be Taught: As early as the 1lth century, Islamic hospitals maintained special wards for the insane.

Old Public Hospital Aleppo

They treated them kindly and presumed their disease was real at a time when the insane were routinely burned alive in Europe as witches and sorcerers.
A curative approach was taken for mental illness, and, for the first time in history, the mentally ill were treated with supportive care, drugs, and psychotherapy.
Every major Islamic city maintained an insane asylum where patients were treated at no charge. In fact, the Islamic system for the treatment of the insane excels compared to the current model, as it was more humane and highly effective.
God emphasizes in the Qur’an the sacredness of the soul and condemns acts of terror and injustice.

If anyone slays a human being – unless it is [in punishment] for murder or for spreading corruption on earth – it shall be as though he had slain all humanity; whereas, if anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he had saved the lives of all humanity. Quran, 5:32

This verse implies that any act of safety intended to save a human life is considered Islamic.
Thus, Islam promotes safety regulations in traffic, industrial, and public settings, supports child-proof medicine bottles, and encourages other accident-preventing measures. This principle of safety extends to the ecological system, promoting a cleaner, healthier environment for all of God’s creations.