(d. 995 AD)

Ali bin Abbas (Haly Abbas)al-Majusi, a physician of the late Abbasid period. This was the phase of original contributions of Arab and Muslim scholars to science, as compared to the period of translations earlier.

He wrote the first treatise on surgery, which was translated into Latin and used in European Universities.He authored “Kamilu Sina’at” or “al-Kitab al-Maliki” (The Royal), a book on medicine which was translated several times into Latin and used in European universities until the 18th century, when it was replaced by Ibn Sina's (Avicenna) “al-Qanoun fil Tibb”.

He described the brain as the center of sensation and movement, and described spastic and flaccid paralysis in spinal cord disease. He described the spinal cord and its 31 pairs of nerves, 8 cervical,12 thoracic, 5 lumbar, 3 sacral, 3 coccygeal, and a sigle nerve below the coccyx

He wrote on the following neurologic conditions: headache, stroke, epilepsy, dementia, coma, schizophrenia, and skull fractures.

He described seven pairs of cranial nerves, each covered intra-cranially by two layers of dura, a thin intima layer containing blood vessels, and a thick layer for protection.

References: Al-Kurdi,A.et al.Neuroscience 9:1,2004; Haddad,S.I.History of Arabic Medicine,1975