Bio-Bibliographies
A B C D F G H I J K M N O P Q R S T V Y Z
The most important physician of the Roman Empire and arguably the most influential physician in medical history. Galen wrote entirely in Greek, and his medical writings preserved today are voluminous. Most of them were translated into Arabic in the ninth century in Baghdad, and through those translations Galen became the most important formative influence on medieval Islamic medicine. see Vivian Nutton, "Roman medicine 250 BC to AD 200" in The Western Medical Tradition ed. L. Conrad, M. Neve and others (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1995) pp. 39-70, esp. pp. 58-70; Vivian Nutton, "Galen's Philosophical Testament: "On My Own Opinions", pp. 27-51 in Aristoteles Werk und Wirkung, Band 2: Kommentierung, Uberlieferung, Nachleben,, ed. Jurgen Wiesner (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1987); Owsei Temkin, Galenism: Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy, (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1973); Sezgin, GAS III, pp. 68-140; and Ullmann, Medizin, pp. 35-68.
Gerard of Cremona (d. AD 1187)
Gerard of Cremona, working in Toledo, was responsible for translating into Latin both Arabic original medical treatises and Arabic translations of earlier Greek medical writings. He was a most prolific translator, with 68 works to his credit, and it is through Gerard's translations that medieval Europe came to know most of the medieval Arabic medical writings and much of the Greek material.
See, Danielle Jacquart, "The influence of Arabic medicine in the medieval West", in Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, ed. R. Rashed (London: Routledge, 1996), vol. 3, pp. 963-984.
Ghiyāth al-Dīn ‘Alī ibn Amīrān
al-Ḥusaynī al-Iṣfahānī (fl. c. 1474/879 H)
غياث الدين على ابن اميرا الحسينى الاصفهاني
He is best known for a Persian encyclopedia of the natural sciences titled Danish'namah-i Jahan which he completed in either 1474/879 or 1466/871. The encyclopedia was concerned with meteorology, minerology, botany, and anatomy. A small treatise on foodstuffs, in table format, is preserved in the NLM collection.
For his writings and the date of composition his encyclopedia, see Keshavarz "Wellcome", pp. 386-7; and Storey PL II, 3, pp. 357-8 no. 595.
Ghulām Imām, Ḥakīm (dates uncertain)
حكيم غلام امام
Ḥakīm Ghulām Imām composed a Persian-language treatise on therapeutics titled ‘Ilāj al-ghurabā’ (The Treatment of Rare Conditions), which is preserved today in only one recorded manuscript (now in India) but which was printed in India many times in the 19th century. Nothing is known of the author, though it can be assumed that he was active in India before the first quarter of the 19th century.
For copies and printings of his treatise, see Storey PL II,2, p. 318, no. 70
