The Unani Medicine System
This
ancient medical tradition, with it s origins in the Mediterranean world
and its development in the Middle East, was brought to India with the
spread of Islamic civilization. The system came to India as a result of
Muslim conquests in the region from around the 10th century A.D. Thus, an
originally transplanted medical system, became indigenous and traditional
over the centuries, to the extent that today it is commonly used.
The
Unani system of medicine was founded on the principles propounded by
Galen, a Greek practitioner. Kitab-al-shifa, the magnum opus of Abu Sina,
an Arab philosopher and physicist, also known as Avicenna in English (A.D.
980-1037), played a role of great importance in the development of this
system. In fact, it was not only Abu Sina but many other Arab and Persian
philosophers who contributed to its growth and development. Their role is
evident from the fact that today this style of medicine is not known as
Galenic, as it was earlier called, but the Unani (Arabic name for Greek)
system of medicine.
The essence of the Galenic system was the
so-called humoural pathology which, having originated in the Hippocratic
school of Kos, came to be modified by Aristotle and by medical schools
such as Penumaticians. It was moulded by Galen into a comprehensive and
well-thought -out theory, the main point of which was that food, after
being ingested was transformed by natural warmth in the stomach into
different substances. Part of these were useful to the body and after a
second transformation in the liver was transported by the blood to the
different organs of the body, while the waste was excreted. The main
products of this process were the four cardinal homours : blood, mucus,
yellow bile and black bile. These humours were combined with the four
primary qualities: warmth (or heat), cold, moisture (or dampness), and
dryness. 
It
the four humours and the four primary qualities were all in a state of
mutual equilibrium, man was healthy. The influence of exterior factors
such as climate, age, profession, customs, etc caused a dominance of one
of the four humours to be observed in very human body. This gave a man his
individual babit and complexion, his "temperament", which may be
sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, or melancholic.
The magic word
of this system was eukrasia, or more comprehensively symmetry
in the different spheres of his life that a man protected his health and
it was by teaching his patients how to conserve or restore it that a
physician made himself indispensable in the Galenic system. The Galenic
physician was menat not only to be a simple practitioner busy with curing
bodily diseases but an ethical instructor as well.
Another
characteristic feature of the Galenic system was the Aristotelian relation
between the general and the particular. What the medical textbooks
contained were only the general facts of anatomy, pathology, etc. From
these general rules, physicians had to derive the appropriate individual
treatment for a given case by means of logical procedure, especially by
the so-called analogical conclusion (analogismos). This was why in the
Unani system it was not possible to be a good physician without having
thoroughly learned the rules of logic.
Hospitals were built by
both rulers and noblemen from the beginning of the Muslim rule, but their
endowment was looked on rather as a matter of philanthropy than as part of
a ruler's administrative duties. The development of hospitals was
encouraged in Iranian doctors who migrate here in the rein of Akbar.
Through them the number of hospitals increased in his and in succeeding
reigns. Both (Ayurvedic) vaidyas and (Unani) hakims were employed in these
bimaristans (hospitals), suggesting that there was recognition on the part
of the hakims of the merits of the other system. The most important Muslim
medical text produced in India, Miyan
Bhowa's
shifa- Sikandarshahi (The Mine of Medicine of King Sikander), completed in
A.D. 1512 and dedicated to the Sultan of Delhi, Sikander Lodi, fully
recognized that the Unani system in its pure form did not suit local
conditions, because the climate was different and many Unani drugs were
hardly obtainable in India. On the other hand, Indian medicine knew of
many drugs equally efficacious but not recognized in the Unani system. The
practitioners of the two systems seem to have collaborated because each
had much to learn form the other and further improved their own respective
systems this way.
Today, the Unani system of medicine is
practiced in India. Thanks to the pioneering work and research of a
charitable organization Hamdard and various Tibbiya
colleges located throughout the country, this system of medicine is in no
danger of going into oblivion.
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