Ibn Sina, Abu 'Ali al-Husain bin Abd allah (Avicenna). Sharh Kitab Qanun fi' l-Tibb, An Unusually Large Arabic manuscript on paper, Near East or Persia, Circa 15th century

Ibn Sina was born in A.H.370/A.D.980 in Afshana near Bukhara. His native language was Persian, but, like the majority of scholars of the period he wrote in Arabic.  He can be regarded as the most influential writer in the history of medicine.  Such was the usefulness of his Qanun that, from its origins in the early eleventh century in western Iran it was used all over the Middle East and Europe as the standard medical textbook for a period of seven centuries.  It was translated into Latin in its entirety by Gerard of Cremona between 1150 and 1187, and it formed the basis of medical teaching at all European universities and appears in the oldest known syllabus of teaching, that of the Medical School of Montpellier in 1309.  His fame was such that even Chaucer mentions him in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, remarking that no good doctor should be ignorant of his work.

Ibn Sina's descriptions are both clear and lucid, and he gathered together in one work the myriad and scattered doctrines of Hippocrates, Galen and Aristotle amongst other ancients.  Essentially it was the most complete encyclopaedic corpus of medieval medical knowledge.