Al-Razi's treatise on smallpox and measles

One night, at the house of a nobleman, the talk turned to smallpox and al-Razi gave his views. His host asked him to write a complete account, because, al-Razi said in his preface, no accurate and satisfactory one had yet appeared among ancient or modern writers. The result was a book of 14 chapters on smallpox and measles. It was not the first monograph on the subject, however. Thabit ibn Qurra, a 9th century scholar in Baghdad best known for mathematics and astronomy, had already written one.

The book opens by answering physicians who said that Galen never mentioned smallpox, citing passages from several of Galen's works. Then it turns to practice. The eruption of smallpox, al-Razi wrote, is preceded by continued fever, pain in the back, itching of the nose and terrors in sleep, with redness of the cheeks, eyes and gums, a sore throat and heaviness of the whole body. Restlessness, nausea and anxiety were more frequent in measles, and back pain more typical of smallpox. Later chapters cover regimen, care of the throat and eyes, drying the pustules, removing the scars and feeding the patient. Pustules that were white, large, distinct and few, with a mild fever, marked the most curable form.

Al-Razi, known in Europe as Rhazes, was born in the Persian city of Rayy, near present-day Tehran, in 865 and died there around 925. He studied philosophy, alchemy and music before medicine, served at the Samanid court and headed hospitals in Rayy and Baghdad. More than 1,000 of his case histories survive.

Europe first knew the book through a Greek translation, and Giorgio Valla's Latin version of the Greek was printed at Venice in 1498. Interest grew after about 1720, when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the ambassador at the Turkish court in Istanbul, described inoculation against smallpox as practised in Turkey. In 1747 Richard Mead published, with his own book on the two diseases, the first Latin translation made directly from the Arabic. Channing printed the Arabic text with a new Latin version in 1766, and William Alexander Greenhill's English translation appeared in London in 1848.