Figure 1. The front binding board of a seventeenth-century copy of the Ibn Sina's al-Qanun fi'l-Tibb. (It is known in the West as Avicenna's Canon.) Wellcome MS Or. 155, Isfahan, Iran, 1632. The scene, painted in the style of Persian miniatures, depicts the physician taking the patient's pulse. The ‘pulse’ was the key diagnostic tool in pre-modern medicine with a detailed description of rhythms carefully correlated with various disorders (physical and psychological) as understood then. The Canon systematically encompasses, in five books, all of Graeco-Arabic medical knowledge. It is one of the most influential works in history of medicine and medical teaching. Numerous copies of the Arabic manuscript exist in various library collections.

Figure 2. Title page, Avicenna, Canon; Rome: Typographia Medicea, 1593.L 21282. Ibn Sina's al-Qanun fi'l-Tibb, known as Avicenna's Canon, was printed in Arabic for the first time by the Medici Press in Rome by means of a specially designed moveable metal type in an elegant cursive under the direction of Giovan Battista Raimondi (d. 1614). Originally intended, as part of an ambitious publishing venture, for the Eastern market, it served, instead, the humanist scholars in Northern Europe and England during the seventeenth century in their comparative studies and the corrections of its Latin versions.

Figure 3. First of two folios from the manuscript of Avicenna's Canon in Latin. L 31500 – Avicenna, Canon Libri I–V [Avicenna]. Padua: [J.Herbort], 1479. Sig a 2 recto. Originally written in Arabic in five books, the Canon in its Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona at the beginning of the twelfth century, became one of the most widely diffused and authoritative texts on Graeco-Arabic medicine. It was standard reading at medical schools (Montpelier, Bologna, Padua, and Louvain) until the end of the seventeenth century. The formative influence and longevity of the Canon derives from a systematic and rational exposition of medicine which is both theoretical as well as empirical. It represents a comprehensive synthesis of Aristotelian natural philosophy with Galenic humoral physiology. At the same time, Avicenna draws on the Hippocratic tradition, including the clinical experience, comparative assessment, and observational experiments of such physicians as Rhazes as well as those of his own.

Figure 4. Second of two folios from the manuscript of Avicenna's Canon in Latin. L 31500 – Avicenna, Canon Libri I–V [Avicenna]. Padua: [J.Herbort], 1479. Sig a 4 recto. Originally written in Arabic in five books, the Canon in its Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona at the beginning of the twelfth century, became one of the most widely diffused and authoritative texts on Graeco-Arabic medicine. It was standard reading at medical schools (Montpelier, Bologna, Padua, and Louvain) until the end of the seventeenth century. The formative influence and longevity of the Canon derives from a systematic and rational exposition of medicine which is both theoretical as well as empirical. It represents a comprehensive synthesis of Aristotelian natural philosophy with Galenic humoral physiology. At the same time, Avicenna draws on the Hippocratic tradition, including the clinical experience, comparative assessment, and observational experiments of such physicians as Rhazes as well as those of his own.