This article appeared in the most recent issue of Aramcpworld Magazine. For the whole article click the link below but for people short of time I am highlighting some parts of the article.    Shoeb

The Medieval Islamic Medicine Cabinet

Medieval Islamic pharmacology was not only extensive but also the strongest empirically based biological science. Like most medieval medicine, the Islamic viewpoint was an outgrowth of Galen’s Humoral Theory and focused on the need to balance the humors, or bodily fluids.

Medieval Islamic pharmacology was not only extensive but also the strongest empirically based biological science. Like most medieval medicine, the Islamic viewpoint was an outgrowth of Galen’s Humoral Theory and focused on the need to balance the humors, or bodily fluids.

Cathartics, purges and laxatives were considered essential to this goal. The most popular herb—an enduring favorite today—was senna, a low bush with small yellow flowers, greenish yellow leaves, and fat seed pods. The leaves have a distinctive smell, and the infusion made from them has a nauseatingly sweet taste; taken alone, the infusion does indeed produce nausea. Both taste and effect were calmed by adding aromatic spices.

The Arabs also introduced manna and tamarind as safe, mild and reliable laxatives. Scammony, a climbing plant of the morning glory family that has thick roots with medicinal value, was a controversial herb in Europe, where some practitioners declared its violent laxative action unsafe to use under any conditions, while others said they could not function without it. Islamic pharmacists responded by devising a reliable preparation to temper the herb’s ferocity but retain its potency. They did this by first boiling the scammony root inside a fruit called a quince; the scammony was then discarded and the quince pulp mixed with the soothing, gooey seeds of psyllium. The preparation was known as “diagridium.”

Formulation developed into an art involving many steps and ingredients. Ar-Razi, Islamic medicine’s greatest clinician and most original thinker, combined bitter almonds with an ounce of raisin rob, or pulp, to treat kidney stones. For the same ailment, a clinician named Haly Abbas recommended boiling jujubes, fruits of sebesten, white maude, and seeds of smallage, fennel, caltrop and thyme.

The Simples

In addition to compounds, the early pharmacists valued hundreds of simple herbal remedies. They used sesame oil to relieve coughs and soften rawness of the throat. Juice from the stalk and leaves of the licorice plant was considered good for respiratory problems, swollen glands, and clearing the throat, whereas the root was used to treat foot ulcers and wounds.

Cardamom was believed to cool the body and aid digestion; it has endured as a principal ingredient in Arabic coffee. Cumin was, and still is, used as an antiflatulent and to relieve stomach cramps. Fennel was used to prevent obesity.

Myrrh was highly valued for its medicinal properties as an astringent and was also used to treat dyspepsia, chronic bronchitis, leukorrhea and as a topical application in gum disease.

Islamic simples also included a variety of analgesics. Ibn Sina’s Canon lists opium poppy, two other varieties of poppy, mandrake, henbane, black nightshade and lettuce seed as effective pain relievers.

Aconite was prescribed for rheumatism, gout, whooping cough, asthma and fever. Cloves were used for toothaches and to control vomiting. The medieval Muslims were the first to use cassia and appreciated its mild laxative action, which made it a popular herbal remedy for young children and the elderly. Caraway oil, which remains a common herbal remedy, was taken to aid digestion. Boiled thyme was prescribed for colds and in its natural form was considered a treatment for indigestion and tooth pain. Baked with bread za’atar remains a common breakfast herb valued for its breath-freshening qualities.

Muslim doctors employed walnut oil for stomach and kidney ailments, “especially for the well fed,” according to Ibn Sina. Abu Mansur described sweet almond oil as “good for opening the bowels and useful for pains affecting the stomach, kidney, liver, chest and lungs.” Infusions of absinthe were used to treat diabetes, African rue was used for headaches, and pomegranate peels were placed on skin ulcers.

These are only a few of the herbs that Arabs valued and recognized for their healing properties and as buffers and vehicles for making medicines more palatable.

http://www.aramcoworld.com/en-US/Articles/May-2016/The-Islamic-Roots-of-Modern-Pharmacy

At our last TF meeting on April 24th Dr. A.S.Amin gave a talk about his recently published book “Conflicts of Interest: Islam, America and Evolutionary Psychology”.  We await a concise summary of his talk for those who could not attend. Somehow, his book got noticed by a Frenchman who writes a blog about evolutionary psychology. He then has written an extensive review of one of the topics in the book. Attaching the link to that blog. Even people who could not attend the TF meeting will find it interesting.  Editor

XXXVI The Evolutionary Roots of the Clash of Civilizations

The relationships between Islam and the West have been hotly discussed for decades. Milestones in this debate have been books such as The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama (1992), Jihad vs McWorld by Benjamin Barber (1995), The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel Huntington (1996). In his work Conflicts of Fitness: Islam, America, and Evolutionary Psychology (2015), Dr A.S. Amin (MD) brings new insights in the discussion by making fruitful use of the findings of evolutionary psychology (EP), and I will review his ideas at some length while broaching the evolutionary roots of the clash of civilizations.

For more of this blog click on the following link:

https://florentboucharel.com/category/english/

Shared by Mirza Iqbal Ashraf!

Is Swearing a Sign of a Limited Vocabulary?

By Piercarlo Valdesolo on April 5, 2016

New research challenges the idea that vulgar words are a sign of failure

Taboo words hold a particular purpose in our lexicon that other words cannot as effectively accomplish: to deliver intense, succinct and directed emotional expression.
Credit: Future Publishing/Getty Images

When words fail us, we curse. At least this is what the “poverty-of-vocabulary” (POV) hypothesis would have us believe. On this account, swearing is the “sign of a weak vocabulary”, a result of a lack of education, laziness or impulsiveness. In line with this idea, we tend to judge vulgarians quite harshly, rating them as lower on socio-intellectual status, less effective at their jobs and less friendly. But this view of the crass does not square with recent research in linguistics. For example, the POV hypothesis would predict that when people struggle to come up with the right words, they are more likely to spew swears left and right. But research shows that people tend to fill the awkward gaps in their language with “ers” and “ums” not “sh*ts” and “godd*mnits.” This research has led to a competing explanation for swearing: fluency with taboo words might be a sign of general verbal fluency. Those who are exceptionally vulgar might also be exceptionally eloquent and intelligent. 　Indeed, taboo words hold a particular purpose in our lexicon that other words cannot as effectively accomplish: to deliver intense, succinct and directed emotional expression. So, those who swear frequently might just be more sophisticated in the linguistic resources they can draw from in order to make their point.

New research by cognitive scientists at Marist College and the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts attempts to test this possibility, and further debunk the POV hypothesis, by measuring how taboo word fluency relates to general verbal fluency. The POV hypothesis suggests that there should be a negative correlation: the more you swear, the lower your verbal prowess. But the researchers hypothesized just the opposite: the more you swear the more comprehensive your vocabulary would be.

Across three studies, they gave participants a well-known measure of verbal fluency called the Controlled Word Association Test (COWAT). The COWAT asks participants to say as many words as they can that start with a given letter (e.g. F, A or S) during a specified time window. The amount of words that they generate is summed into a fluency score. Then, in what has to be one of the most awkward and hilarious experimental situations in the history of cognitive science, participants had to say, out loud to the experimenter, as many swear words as they could think of in one minute. This was the measure of taboo word fluency.

Results from Study 1 showed that participants generated 400 unique taboo words (see the Results for some of the more colorful entries) and, as the researchers predicted, fluency in generating these words correlated positively with performance on the COWAT. This finding was replicated in Studies 2 and 3, using a written version of the tests as well. The more taboo words participants could generate, the more verbally fluent they were in general.

This finding can serve as a nice empirical middle-finger from vulgarians everywhere, directed at those who had, until now, been unfairly judging them for their linguistic abilities. Swearing, it seems, can be creative, smart, and even downright lyrical. This should also open our eyes to the unique subfield of research that spends its time deconstructing the many and varied ways in which, and reasons why, we swear. For example, did you know that some linguists and philosophers of language draw meaningful distinctions between taboo words that express heightened emotional states (e.g., f*ck), general pejoratives (e.g., f*cker) whose meaning is connotative but person-directed, and slurs (e.g., sl*t), which have both expressive and derogatory descriptive elements? I did not know this.

That said, these results need to be taken with a grain of salt. Knowledge of taboo words and the regular use of those words are two very different things. I might very well have an encyclopedic knowledge of vulgarity, but I might also have the tact necessary to regulate my language in social situations. In other words, just because verbally fluent people have the ability to cuss with the best of them, does not mean that they will do so. This presents a bit of a problem with the current research since the authors do seem to want to make the claim that their results inform what kinds of people actually curse in the real world. This conclusion cannot be drawn from these data. 　The studies tell us nothing about how speakers use taboo words, just what they would be capable of saying if they chose to use them. Swearing regularly and being able to generate a long list of curse words when prompted are very different. Indeed, the POV hypothesis could still survive this criticism. It still might be true that those with greater verbal fluency, even though they also have greater taboo fluency, swear less because they have the lexical database required to actually express themselves in other ways.

In 1977 Norman Mailer confronted Gore Vidal at a party after Vidal poorly reviewed one of Mailer’s books. Mailer’s anger boiled over and he sent Vidal to the ground with a punch. From the floor, Gore Vidal looked up and famously quipped: “Once again, words have failed Norman Mailer.” No doubt, Vidal could have unleashed a string of profanities at his aggressor. He surely had a mastery of taboo language comparable to his mastery of language in general. But his verbal fluency allowed him to craft an even wittier response. And had words not failed Mailer, perhaps he too would have reacted less crassly.

Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook. Gareth, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, is the series editor of Best American Infographics and can be reached at

garethideas@gmail.com or Twitter　@garethideas.

Shared by Dr. Nasik Elahi

The results of this poll, whether one agrees with the methods and results or not,
reveal some facts about the Muslim way of thinking that need to be examined
dispassionately.  The Muslim integration in Britain may be different from US but
some of the basic strains are common and have a direct impact upon assimilation in
the west.
Nasik Elahi

Please click the following hyperlink to read the full article:
https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/15/world/europe/poll-british-muslims.amp.html?client=safari#