Stroke medicine in antiquity: The Greek and Muslim contribution

Abstract

The collective human effort to understand the brain and its common disease, stroke, has spanned many centuries, cultures, and societies. The ancient Greek and Muslim physicians made important contributions to the understanding and management of stroke in their time. The Muslim physicians, from 800 to 1200 AD, played an outstanding role, by conserving and refining Greco-Roman philosophies, formulating their own theories and reaching conclusions, some of which match our modern stroke models. They recognized the importance of the brain as a source of stroke symptoms, proposed the vascular nature of stroke etiology, and had some thoughts about intra-ventricular hemorrhage, and the process of atherosclerosis with the help of ancient philosophies. Their management strategies have now been discarded, but some of the herbal medicines they used, may be useful in stroke management today. Therefore, more research is required into the ancient texts to evaluate the efficacy of their management strategies.

Keywords

• Aristotle
• Avicenna
• Galen
• Golden age of Islamic history
• Hippocrates
• Muslim physicians
• stroke