Mesue the Younger

There were 2 Physicians known by the Latinised name of “Mesue”

Mesue the Elder: Lived circa 777 to 857 CE.

Served as a renowned Christian physician in Baghdad and personal doctor to multiple Abbasid caliphs.
Wrote early texts on Ophthalmology, Anatomy, and Melancholy

Mesue the Younger: died 1015 CE

Worked in Baghdad and Cairo. Authored the famous Antidotarium sive Grabadin, a comprehensive pharmacy compendium.
Served as the standard European textbook reference for apothecaries for many centuries.

Here we are focusing on Mesue the Younger, a source for many of the most important formulas in the Western Tradition over the past millennia.

Early Life and Education

• Born in the city of Mardin, Upper Mesopotamia (modern-day southeastern Turkey) during the 10th century
• He was a Christian scholar (historians identify him as either Syriac Orthodox or Nestorian Christian)
• He moved to Baghdad, the intellectual and scientific capital of the Islamic Golden Age, where he completed his advanced medical and pharmacological training

Medical Career

• Baghdad Practice: He began his career practicing medicine and compounding therapeutics in Baghdad’s highly competitive medical ecosystem
• relocated to Cairo, Egypt, where his growing reputation earned him an appointment as the personal court physician to the Fatimid caliph, Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah
• He continued to practice, teach, and write in Cairo until his death in 1015 CE at the advanced age of ninety

Major Achievements

• His translated compendiums supplanted older Greek texts to become the primary, authoritative textbooks for Western European apothecaries
• Nearly half of the original recipes compiled in the first London Pharmacopoeia (1618) were attributed directly to his specific formulas. This was the same in other European Pharmacopoeias.
• detailed early methods for the distillation of empyreumatic oils.
• Of Mesue, Culpeper said he ‘is called the Physicians Evangelist, for the certainty of his Medicines, and the truth of his Opinions’.
  

Major Written Works

• Antidotarium sive Grabadin medicamentorum: A massive 12-part comprehensive pharmacopoeiadetailing the preparation of 432 compound drugs, pills, syrups, and ointments. It went through more than 50 printed Latin editions during the Renaissance
• De medicinis laxativis: A specialized, highly regarded treatise focused entirely on the properties, dosages, and safe preparation of purgatives and emetics
• Liber de Simplicibus (Book of Simples): A practical physician’s reference manual cataloging individual natural herbs, plants, and single-ingredient medicinal substances

Formulas of Mesue

Mesue truly had a major influence on Pharmacy of the West in the past 1000 years. For centuries throughout Europe, Mediterranean and the Middle East, his formulas were studied and used. The early European and English Pharmacopoeias were based largely on the formulas of Mesue.