Medicine · a Light

Baghdad examined its physicians after one patient died

The physician and historian Ibn abi Usaybi'a, writing in the thirteenth century, reports that in 931 a man in Baghdad died through a practitioner's mistake, and the caliph al-Muqtadir ordered that nobody practise medicine until examined. The task went to Sinan ibn Thabit, of a famous scholarly family, who tested the practitioners of the city and is said to have passed more than eight hundred and sixty. Those who failed were barred, with exemptions for physicians of established reputation. Sinan also arranged for doctors to visit prisons and sent staffed dispensaries out to the villages of the Iraqi countryside. The account is a later one and the round number should be read as a round number, but the principle in it is clear: a licence to practise, granted by examination.

Baghdad · 931 CE, reported by Ibn abi Usaybi'a