A pioneer from the Islamic Golden Age: Haly Abbas and spinal traumas in his principal work, The Royal Book.

Spinal diseases have attracted medical scientists throughout the history of medicine, probably because they are relatively easy to diagnose and fairly simple to treat. Physicians who made great progress in medicine during the glorious Islamic civilizations also enthusiastically dealt with spine-related problems. More than a thousand years ago Persia was a cradle of medical learning, and Islamic medicine and other sciences spread westward from that center. A leading figure during this period was Haly Abbas, who created an excellent and compact medical encyclopedia, The Royal Book. Sadly, this book has rarely been cited in the literature. The subject of the present vignette is Abbas' work regarding spinal trauma.