Avicenna on the Healing Properties of Minerals, Plants, Herbs, and Animals

Avicenna offers a description and healing properties of drugs: their dissolution, boiling down, adhesiveness, sleep-inducing properties, and so forth that are described with any other properties they may have. The list of just some of the properties of healing or harmful drugs appears on the front cover: Absorbent; Actions appear after contact with air; Adhesive (agglutinant); Analgesic; Anesthetic; Anti-relaxing; Astringent (styptic); Blood purifying; Caustic; Cauterizing; Cleansing; Constricting; Corrosive; Dense; Diluting (attenuant, rarefying); Dissolving; Erosive; Extrinsic action; Flatulent; Gluey, sticky (viscous); Heat extinguishing; Immature; Irritant; Lubricant; Nourishing: less; more; Opening (deobstruent); Oxidating (coctive); Preventing putrefaction or decay; Producing: bad humour; black bile; decay (putrefactive); defective chyme; fine chyme; itch (pruritic); perspiration (diaphoretic); phlegm; yellow bile; Purgation helpers; Purifying; Relaxing; Relieving: gas (carminative); perspiration; Removing: harmful effects of phlegm; harms caused by water; Repelling; Roughening; Skin redness producing (rubefacient); Smoothening; Softening; Strengthening viscera; Suitable for the elderly; Thickening (inspissant); Transforming into humours; Treating diseases of black bile; Ulcer producing (ulcerative); Washing (abluent).