Text Box: THE FIRST HISTORICAL TRETISE ON PEDIATRICS
Eidrissy.A.T.H.
King Abdulaziz Hospital & Oncology Center, Jeddah, KSA

As we are having our first meeting in the third millenium in the capital of the country where the 5th of world¡¯s people live we have to pay respect to the person who wrote the first book in paediatrics (THE PRACTICA PUERORUM).  It was written in the year 900AD in BAGDAD by Abubaker M.S. ELRhazi (Rhazes).  The book was published in full in English by Dr.Samuel Radbill in the American Journal of Diseases in Children in 1971 more than a millenium after the death of ELRazi.  Dr.Radbill says ¡°The first Tereatise on Pediatrics is the practica puerorum of Rhazes.  It was written about the year 900.  The author was a Persian Physician active in teaching and practice at Bagdad who also compiled a vast common-place book, the Liber continens and a general medical text the Liber Ad AlMansorem, each of which contained a good deal of pediatrics scattered throughout the text.  His finest achievement, however, was a monograph on smallpox and measles, which was republished continuously in Latin throughout the centuries.  It was Rahzes who first siphoned off pediatrics into a monograph of its own.  We believe the original language in which it was written was Arabic, but unfortunately only translations are available in the present day!  Radbill continued (it was translated into Latin in the school of Gerard of Cremona (1114-1187).  The first printed pediatric book was that of Bagellardus De Egritudinibus Infantium in 1472.  This was largely based on Practica Puerorum of Rhazes.  The practice itself first appeared in print in 1481) I would like to review the contents of this book as reminder to the pediatricians eleven centuries after the death of AlRhazi that we are trying to take more action to relief the suffering of children all over the world.  Can we do it?
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