Neuropsychiatry in the Islamic world of the Middle Ages

Abstract

The distinction between neurology and psychiatry, which represents a prevailing tendency in contemporary medicine, did not exist in the medieval Moslim world. Moslim doctors, linking their research to the Hippocratic and Galenic heritage, thought of the brain as the origin of psychic and neurological diseases. The article analyzes the history of neuropsychiatry in the Moslim medioeval world and its fundamental contribution in a dark age for the western world, through texts written by famous doctors and scientists. Special attention is devoted to pharmacology and therapeutics: many simple and composed drugs were used to cure mental diseases, together with medical rules for a correct way of life.