Avicenna Canon of Medicine Volume 2: Natural Pharmaceuticals

In fact, everyone should read this book for health and well being. This 2-book series — including Volume 1 is a monumental masterpiece of great scientific and philosophical value. You will be awakened from the dream of the inefficiency of conventional medicine with enhanced understanding of other methods of healing. It is amazing to realize that so much knowledge was available a thousand years ago and yet we are hardly doing much better today. Read this series — both volumes 1 and 2 and be healthy, and stay healthy.

Been waiting for an English translation for this for years! Great work, very informative and a must read for any serious herbalist or traditional medicine practitioner. Avicenna is widely regarded as one of the most highly respected figures of traditional medicine and his works were studied for almost 1000 years by medical practitioners throughout Europe, Mediterranean and the Middle East. I recommend highly.

-picture shows Taraxacum officinale and not Cyperus esculentus on page 749- otherwise T. officinale isn't in this book- explanatory notes are unnecessary addition, furthermore they are repeating themselves

I was absolutely thrilled and delighted when I first received my copy of Volume Two of Avicenna's Canon of Medicine, the volume on Natural Medicinals, or Materia Medica, in the mail. Yes, yes! This was the version I had been waiting for, the ultimate guide and authority on Unani (Greco-Arabo-Persian) herbal medicine. As I perused its pages, I realized that its author and translator, Laleh Bakhtiar, had spared no time, effort and expense in order to make this the most complete, comprehensive, beautiful and authoritative translation of this monumental work available today. Just the beautiful color pictures of the herbs alone were well worth the price.I had literally been to the ends of the earth, and had traveled all the way to Delhi, India to obtain the best previously available English translation of volume 2 of Avicenna's Canon of Medicine, which was put out by the Hamdard University Press. Although I was happy to have a copy of Avicenna's Materia Medica in my hands, I quickly saw that it was not exactly user-friendly for English speakers, unless you also speak, read and write Urdu or Arabic. I had to thumb through other books on Unani Medicine that I had to look up the Arabic word for the herb, then look up the first Arabic letter in the table in front, and then thumb through until I found the right entry. A very laborious and time consuming process indeed, and one that is thankfully remedied greatly by this new translation.First of all, the table of contents lists all the herbs in alphabetical order, by their English names, and presents them in that order as well. But when you get to the entry itself, all the names - not only the English names, but also the Latin, Arabic, Persian names, etc... are also listed. This is followed by a full translation of Avicenna's original text and comments concerning the herb's nature, qualities and temperament; its actions, medicinal properties and applications. And there is no shortage of useful indexes in the back of the book either; not only do these indexes list the herbs and medicinal substances in terms of their English, Latin, Arabic and Persian names, but also listings of the medicinal properties and actions that are useful in treating various kinds of diseases and disorders is given, as well as the most thorough and detailed general index that I have ever seen in any herbal that I own, and I own many.If you have any interest at all in natural healing, in herbal medicine, in Greek or Unani Medicine, or in the history of medicine, this groundbreaking work definitely deserves to be in your reference library. I guarantee that you will cherish it forever.Sincerely,David Osborn, MH, L.Ac.[...]

Is this kitab ul-shifaa?

Not impressed. As indicated by another reviewer, this edition has a number of errors. Also, the entries are set in English alphabetical order. I would find it more helpful if they were in the same order as the original Arabic with a good Arabic-English index.

To translate a book like Avicenna's Canon, with all those herbs and compounds old and scientific names to plain English, is such a monumental job that is beyond my apprehension... Ms. Bakhtiar makes is feel like a breeze, but this is no walk in a park... A must have for anyone into Oriental and Alternative Medicine.

As pretty much the first edition in a European language since Alpago's controversial 1544 translation, this should be an invaluable tool to the researcher. It is not;, it is marred by sloppy proof-reading, eccentric English and astounding inaccuracies. For instance to give Cyperus esculentus the curious popular name of "Monkey Pepper" instead of the more familiar "Chufa" or "Tiger nuts" is one thing, but to illustrate it with a picture of a Dandelion, captioned "Compositae" when Taraxacum doesn't otherwise appear either in the index or text, elevates the errors to a dimension way beyond mere carelessness. Again, Galium odoratum is given the vernacular name "Wild baby's breath", a name normally associated with Gypsophila paniculata, but illustrated with a picture of Galium verum, which conforms to the text..In fact in spite of the occasional infelicity the illustrations are arguably the best part and could well have been enlarged at the expense of endless repetitions of the meaning of "hot" and "cold" humours which could instead have been incorporated just once in a glossary. I could go on..........and on about the mangling of Linnaean names, page numbers in the index not correlating with those in the text and weird "popular" names but life is too short. Enough to say that the customer deserves far more for over a hundred quid.

top marks

25 Jahre vor Ibn Sinas 1000.Todestag erscheint nach dem ersten endlich auch der zweite Band dieses wichtigen Werks in einer europäischen Sprache (türkisch mittlerweile Band 1,2 und 5 erhältlich). Sicher keine Übersetzung, die den höchsten Ansprüchen von Orientalisten Genüge leistet. Doch da sich bis heute noch immer kein Orientalist, der sowohl über genügend Kenntnisse der Ibn Sina'schen Fachsprache, der mittelalterlichen Medizin und der historischen Zusammenhänge verfügt, an eine kritische Gesamtedition gewagt hat, kann man dem Herausgeber nur gratulieren und hoffen, dass die fehlenden drei Bände in den nächsten 25 Jahren in ähnlich hoher Qualität erscheinen dürfen.