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Date: May 27, 2010

Title: Hippocrates Meets Hipparchus – Part 2

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Podcaster: Mick Vagg

Description: Astronomers are people too, and they have had their share of dramatic medical problems. This podcast presents case histories of famous astronomy figures and examines whether popular understanding really tallies with our current medical knowledge.

Bio: Dr. Michael Vagg is a physician specializing in Rehabilitation Medicine and Pain Management. He lives in Torquay, in the Surfcoast region of Australia. One day he hopes to be able to remember more than five constellations and own a telescope bigger than Galileo’s.

Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by Greg Dorais, and is dedicated to the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland California. At Chabot Space & Science Center, the universe is yours to experience. Set amid 13 trail-laced acres of East Bay parkland, with glorious views of San Francisco Bay and the Oakland foothills, Chabot is a hands-on celebration of sights, sounds, and sensations.

Transcript:

Hello and greetings again from the Surfcoast in Australia. Today’s podcast will return to our medical theme and look at some of the famous physicians who have also made contributions to astronomy.

Modern medicine has its roots in the work of Ancient Greek physicians such as Hippocrates of Cos, who lived from 460BC to 370BC. Unfortunately for me I have to conclude that Hippocrates cared as much about astronomy as Hipparchus did about medicine.

The heirs of the Greeks were the extraordinary trio of Muslim physicians who were part of the golden age of Arab scholarship at around the start of the second millennium. Razi, Ibn Rashd and Ibn Sina are three of the greatest names in the history of medicine, and they were all active in the same era. The latter two made enormous contributions to philosophy, mathematics and law as well as their work in medicine and astronomy.

Ibn Rashd, better known in Europe by the nickname of Averroes lived in Spain and Northern Africa from 1126-1198 CE. He was an extraordinarily accomplished scholar who made his name in his won lifetime as a physician and judge, but has gone on to be remembered for his contributions to physics and philosophy. He wrote a medical treatise called the ‘Generalities’ or General Rules of Medicine. This book contained the earliest clear description of what we now call Parkinson’s Disease, as well as the first really accurate description of how the eye worked. Ibn Rashd was the first to point out that the retina is the part of the eye where light is transformed into information for the brain to process. It also contains descriptions of procedures in urology and gynaecology, and his original observation tht nobody could contract smallpox twice. This same observation was to lead Edward Jenner to develop vaccination for prevention of disease some 600 years later. As an astronomer he added to Ptolemy’s star catalogue and offered constructive criticisms to the Ptolemaic system of describing planetary motion. He also used his revisions of Aristotle’s descriptions of celestial motion to come up with the idea of inertia, that is a body’s inherent resistance to changing its motion. He criticized the idea that moon was a perfect body, hypothesizing that it was of varying thickness, which accounted for the variation in albedo over its surface.

Ibn Sina, or Avicenna as he was better known in Europe was if anything even more distinguished a scientist than Ibn Rashd. Ibn Sina, who lived most of his life in Persia wrote the definitive work of medicine for the next 6 centuries, called the Canon of Medicine. This book contained succinct and clear descriptions of diseases such as cataracts, diabetes and tuberculosis, and medical reasoning that would be recognizable to doctors today. He was the original lifestyle guru, setting out a rigorous program of exercise and diet as the way to achieve health. Ibn Sina set out the basis for experimental medicine as a truly scientific pursuit, and like Razi and Ibn Rashd he rejected astrology as a basis for medical treatment, which was a prevalent idea at the time, and for centuries later. I haven’t got time to fully describe the importance of this work, but the Wikipedia page on Ibn Sina sets it out in detail. As if this wasn’t enough, he has the distinction of being the first person to successfully observe a transit of Venus, which he did on May 24 1032. He disagreed with Aristotle about the stars reflecting light from the sun and argued that they had their own luminosity. His observations of the transit of Venus led him to conclude that Venus was closer to the sun than Earth and led him almost to a heliocentric model of the solar system. Despite his unparalleled genius he didn’t quite get there though.

It fell to another physician astronomer to get this right, some 500 odd years later. Nicolas Copernicus was possibly the most successful of backyard astronomers ever, as he developed his paradigm-shifting heliocentric model while working as the personal physician, lawyer and general bureaucrat for his uncle. His uncle happened to be the Prince-Bishop of the principality of Warmia in what is now Poland. Copernicus was a very busy and successful politician and administrator as well as a practicing doctor right up until his death in 1543. The medical profession might have lost out on Galileo but at least one of the giants of astronomy was a doctor as well !

I will finish with a fascinating footnote to the story of Copernicus. After he died he was reportedly buried in Frombork Cathedral in the town where he lived. He was supposed to have been buried near a particular altar in the cathedral, which he ad maintained during his life, but archaelogical searches in 1802, 1909, 1932, 1988 and 2004 had failed to locate his remains. In 2005 a fresh search managed to locate what were thought to be his remains but the identity couldn’t be proven. DNA analysis of samples from the bones were able to be matched identically to DNA taken from hairs in a book held with his other library papers in Uppsala University in Sweden. Further proof emerged with a forensic reconstruction of the face from the skull that was found. The reconstruction looked eerily similar to a self-portrait Copernicus had painted towards the end of his life, even down to his crooked nose and scar above the left eye. I like to think that Copernicus, scientist that he was, would have appreciated how technology was used to identify his remains so he could be laid to rest in a manner befitting his enormous contribution to our view of our place in the universe.

So like many doctors who feel a bit guilty about the time they spend gazing skyward, it helps to know that some of the greatest minds in history did the same thing in their own time.

Clear skies

End of podcast:

365 Days of Astronomy
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