The Arabs have been considered to be the founders of
modern experimental science. They were relatively skillful chemists, for they
discovered a number of new compounds (such as alcohol, aqua regia, nitric acid,
and corrosive sublimate) and understood the preparation of mercury and of
various oxides of metals. In medicine the Arabs based their investigations on
those of the Greeks, but made many additional contributions to the art of
healing. They studied physiology and hygiene, dissected the human body,
performed difficult surgical operations, used anaesthetics, and wrote treatises
on such diseases as measles and smallpox. Arab medicine and surgery were
studied by the Christian peoples of Europe throughout the later period of the
Middle Ages.
MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY
The Arabs had a strong taste for mathematics. Here again
they carried further the old Greek investigations. In arithmetic they used the
so- called "Arabic" figures, which were probably borrowed from India.
The Arabic numerals gradually supplanted in western Europe the awkward Roman
numerals. In geometry the Arabs added little to Euclid, but algebra is
practically their creation. An Arabic treatise on algebra long formed the
textbook of the subject in the universities of Christian Europe. Spherical
trigonometry and conic sections are Arabic inventions. This mathematical
knowledge enabled the Arabs to make considerable progress in astronomy.
Observatories at Bagdad and Damascus were erected as early as the ninth
century. Some of the astronomical instruments which they constructed, including
the sextant and the gnomon, are still in use. [28]
[28] Many words in European languages beginning with the
prefix al (the definite article in Arabic) show how indebted was Europe
to the Arabs for scientific knowledge. In English these words include alchemy
(whence chemistry), alcohol, alembic, algebra, alkali,
almanac, Aldebaran (the star), etc.
