Digital Objects

The Al-Hawi is the Al-Razi's most significant contribution to the Middle Age's medical history, and it is the most crucial work of Arabic medicine after the Avicenna's Canon. Despite this, al-Hawi is frequently confused with Al Jami al-Kabir (The Great Comprehensive) , and it has been translated in Latin as Continens as the same al-Hawi. Al Hawi is a collection of private notebooks about excerpts of earlier sources in Greek, Sanskrit, Syriac and Persian where the author annotated and recorded all the diseases and their treatments from Alexandria School, India and Mesopotamian medical traditions. Al Hawi was conceived as a great encyclopaedia whose completion has been interrupted by the author's death, the reason why the work has not a systematic character. Al-Razi mentioned the excerpt and provided a corresponding comment adding his own opinion, comments and medical expertise are frequently indicated with the Arabic term "Li" which means mine. The work integrates medical theory with clinical expertise, observations and case studies; his students have written this book after his death. Al-Hawi was translated to Latin in 1279 by Faraj Ibn Salim, the first printed version entitled Continens was published at Brescia, Italy, in 1486 and the same edition here presented. This version was the most important medical books of the Middle Age. The use is an example of the method used by Al-Razes consisting of the integration between case studies and medical theories. In the book, case histories are used as an educational tool and documentation of the various diagnosis and treatments assigned by Al-Razi in his clinical work. The book showed a particular ability to localize lesions, prognosticate and describe therapeutic options, and reported the clinical observation to highlight the relationship between clinical sign and lesion.

We present the books XIII and XXIII of the editio princeps of Continents, translated by Faraj Ibn Salim into Latin 1279 and published 18 October 1486 at Brescia in Italy by the printer Jacobus Britannicus. The book has been in the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso (Alcala' de Henares) and the Real Colegio de Cirugia de San Carlos de Madrid. 1 v paper