matical works. The
accuracy of his translations became a proverb. His compendium of Galen
was the text-book of medicine in the West for many centuries. It was
known as the "Isagoge in Artem Parvam Galeni." His son, Ishac Ben
Honein, and his nephew, Hobeisch, were also famous as medical
practitioners and translators.

Still another of these Arabian Christians, who acquired a reputation as
writers in medicine, was Alkindus. He wrote with regard to nearly
everything, however, and so came to be called the philosopher. He is
said altogether to have written and translated about two hundred works,
of which twenty-two treat of medicine. He was a contemporary of Honein
Ben Ischak in the ninth century. Another of the great ninth-century
Christian physicians and translators from the Greek was Kostaben Luka.
He was of Greek origin, but lived in Armenia and made translations from
Greek into Arabic. Nearly all of these men took not alone medical
science, but the whole round of physical science, for their special
subject. A typical example in the ninth century was Abuhassan Ben Korra,
many of whose family during succeeding generations attracted attention
as scholars. He became the astronomer and physician of the Caliph
Motadhid. His translations in medical literature were mainly excerpts
from Hippocrates and Galen meant for popular use. These Christian
translators, thoroughly scientific as far as their times permitted them
to be, were wonderfully industrious in their work as translators, great
teachers in every sense of the word, and they are the men who formed
the traditions on which the greater Arabian physicians from Rhazes
onward were educated.

It would be easy to think that these men, occupied so much with
translations, and intent on the re-introduction of Greek medicine, might
have depended very little on their own observations, and been very
impractical. All that is needed to counteract any such false impression,
however, is to know something definite about their books. Gurlt, in his
"History of Surgery," has some quotations from Serapion the elder, who
is often quoted by Rhazes. In the treatment of hemorrhoids Serapion
advises ligature and insists that they must be tied with a silk thread
or with some other strong thread, and then relief will come. He says
some people burn them _medicinis acutis_ (touching with acids, as some
do even yet), and some incise them with a knife. He prefers the
ligature, however. He calmly discus