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It was further enriched by imbibing the best of contemporary systems of medicine in the far eastern and middle eastern countries including ancient Phoenicia.
Unani medicine was the first to establish that disease was a natural process and that symptoms were the reactions of the body to the disease. It believes in the humoral theory which presupposes the presence of the four humors - Dam (blood), Balgham (phlegm), Safra (yellow bile) and Sauda (black bile) in the body. Each humor has its own temperament - blood is hot and moist, phlegm cold and moist, yellow bile hot and dry and black bile cold and dry. Every person attains a temperament according to the preponderance in them of the humors which represent the person''s healthy state, which are expressed as sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic.
To maintain the correct humoral balance there is a power of self preservation or adjustment called Quwwat-e-Mudabbira (medicatrix naturae) in the body. When this power weakens, imbalance in humoral compositions occurs resulting in disease. The medicines used help regain this power and thereby restore the humoral balance and the disease is eradicated.
Timeline Development of Unani Medicine & Science (www.unani.com)
In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer identifies the authorities used by his Doctour of Physic: four Unani physicians --- Ali ibn al-Abbas al-Majusi (Jesu Haly), al-Razi (Rhazes), Ibn Sina (Avycen) and Ibn Rushd (Averrois). These four Hakims were among the greatest medical figures of the ancient world. Their authority remained throughout the European Middle Ages, and their books were the basis of medical instruction in European medical schools, up to even the start of the 20th century.
The Arab Unani physicians of the eighth to eleventh centuries were the founders of the science of modern medicine, with an amazing array of discoveries, inventions, medical instruments and brilliant writings.
The Unani physicians arose from the Islamic culture of 1,000 years ago, and their view was based upon a concept of medicine as the science by which the functioning of the human body could be discerned. Their goal is the preservation of health and to assist the body in its role as self-healer. They place as much emphasis on the maintenance of health as on the art of healing.
Unani medicine actually goes back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.s.) who himself stated that there was no disease without a cure. There are entire books written on Tibb-ul-Nabbawi, or Medicine of the Prophet, so extensive were his knowledges of the healing arts.
It is no exaggeration to say that the great Unani physicians were the originators of the study of medicine as science. They eliminated all superstition and harmful folk-practices from ancient practices.
The Unani system is also responsible for first introducing the concept of professional standards of practice and the examination of physicians. Moreover, at the core of Unani healing is a moral code, implicit for both the patient and practitioner.
The first hospitals were built under the auspices of the Unani physicians. They were elegant and sophisticated structures, supremely functional, with running water and baths, different sections for the treatment of various diseases, with each section headed by a specialist. Hospitals were open 24 hours a day to handle emergency cases and did not turn any patient away.
Unani physicians inherited the medical tradition of Hippocrates and the Greeks, but quickly put the mark of their own genius upon all medicine.
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