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Document Details :

Title: 'Îsâ ibn Mâssa on Medicinal Weights and Measures
Author(s): KAHL, O.
Journal: Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica
Volume: 23    Date: 1992   
Pages: 275-279
DOI: 10.2143/OLP.23.1.519175

Abstract :
One of the greatest obstacles to a proper understanding, and hence rating of mediaeval Arabic pharmacology lies in the lack of fixed standards for the medicinal weights and measures involved. Depending on time and place, most units were, if at all, valued differently; to some extent, an incoherent terminology added to the general confusion. The old Arab physicians already faced this problem. Therefore, they frequently appended to their works explanatory notes as to the weights and measures they themselves had used. Unfortunately, these notes have almost completely been neglected by modern metrological secondary literature where mainly geographical sources are eploited. For this reason, any authentic material obtained from medical resp. pharmacological sources has to be made accessible, all the more so if it dates back to a periodof time when the so-called 'canonical' units were established.

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