, one of the finest figures of the century, was Honein, a
Christian Arab, born in 809, whose name was Latinized as Joannitius.
"The marvellous extent of his works, their excellence, their importance,
the trials he bore nobly at the beginning of his career, everything
about him arouses our interest and sympathy. If he did not actually
create the Oriental renaissance movement, certainly no one played in
it a more active, decided and fruitful part."(10) His industry was
colossal. He translated most of the works of Hippocrates and Galen,
Aristotle and many others. His famous "Introduction" or "Isagoge,"
a very popular book in the Middle Ages, is a translation of the
"Microtegni" of Galen, a small hand-book, of which a translation is
appended to Cholmeley's "John of Gaddesden."(11) The first printed
edition of it appeared in 1475 (see Chapter IV) at Padua.

(10) Leclerc: Histoire de la medecine arabe, Tome I, p. 139.

(11) Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1912, pp. 136-166. The Mesues also
did great work, and translations of their compilations,
particularly those of the younger Mesue, were widely distributed
in manuscript and were early printed (Venice, 1471) and
frequently reprinted, even as late as the seventeenth century.

Leclerc gives the names of more than one hundred known translators who
not only dealt with the physicians but with the Greek philosophers,
mathematicians and astronomers. The writings of the physicians of India
and of Persia were also translated into Arabic.

But close upon the crowd of translators who introduced the learning of
Greece to the Arabians came original observers of the first rank, to a
few only of whom time will allow me to refer. Rhazes, so called from the
name of the town (Rai) in which he was born, was educated at the great
hospital at Bagdad in the second half of the ninth century. With a true
Hippocratic spirit he made many careful observations on disease, and
to him we owe the first accurate account of smallpox, which he
differentiated from measles. This work was translated for the old
Sydenham Society by W.A. Greenhill (1848), and the description given
of the disease is well worth reading. He was a man of strong powers
of observation, good sense and excellent judgment. His works were very
popular, particularly the gigantic "Continens," one of the bulkiest of
incunabula. The Brescia edition, 1486, a magnificent volume, extends
over 588 pages and it must weigh