Rules is Rules!

 

Today my focus is on rules; my trusted Chambers defines this as: ‘a regulation that must not be transgressed, a maxim or formula that is generally, but not compulsory to follow.’ That seems to encapsulate a cline of seriousness. 😊

As a teacher much time was spent dealing with linguistic infelicities which left me with a red pen twitch and a lack of confidence in some spellings, having seen the wrong form so frequently. But a favourite time at the new term was negotiating classroom rules with new students. You could learn lot about them and - if their rules for teachers included ‘coming to class on time’ and ‘being prepared’ – their past experience! Their rules for the teacher and my rules for the class were boarded then discussed. Interestingly, what they tended to boil down to was ‘mutual respect’.             

That is a feature that is generally lacking when we see behavioural norms not being adhered to. My time in Greece has shown me that many locals have an innate need to be number one. This is expressed on the road, where drivers loop out forming imaginary lanes and zoom along the outside, only to force their entry into the proper lane where the road narrows later on. This habit can cause irritation in other drivers, delays, congestion and, of course, accidents.

As a regular city bus user, I still cannot grasp the logic behind, as a member of a 6-person queue, being shoved from behind by someone in a rush to claim a seat …. on a 30-seater vehicle! ☹ The number one syndrome again. Oh, and then you have the cheapskate non-ticket payment. Our buses all have automatic ticket vending and validating machines.

 Recently 3 ladies of Slavic origin boarded my bus, pretending they didn’t understand anything, ticket systems, language, nothing – despite fellow passengers‘ attempts to explain and assist. The trio did a bit of pondering over the vending machine then sat down chuckling away among themselves at the ruse they’d pulled off. An Oscar-worthy smooth performance of a stunt clearly honed to perfection by frequent rehearsal!

Such blatant bad behaviour reduces me to outrage and I morph into the unbearable good kid in the classroom with a need to expose it: ‘Miss, miss ….!’ It expresses selfishness and anti-social conduct.

The students got it right. We need mutual respect for the rules, for others and for ourselves.

Medical Knowledge and the Islamic Golden Age

In a recent post, stimulated by the murals at the Papageorgiou General Hospital, I explored what the Ancient Egyptians contributed to medical knowledge. Now I turn to see what the Arab culture had to contribute. Our point of historic reference is the Islamic Golden Age which roughly spanned 7^th-13^th centuries AD.

Islam is said to have emerged from the desert of the Arabian Peninsula, conquering the old Egyptian, Persian, Roman and Near Eastern Empires. Its language being Arabic, it integrated elements of these cultures into its own and became the centre of a brilliant civilization, of great scientific, philosophic and artistic significance. It should be noted that some scholars term this ‘Arab Science’ though not all the scientists were Arabs and not all were Muslims. The main centres of learning were widespread, ranging from Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and later, Cordoba in Spain.

But, of course, our focus is the field of medicine, which was the central part of this culture. Physicians and scholars were greatly influenced by Galen and Hippocrates. Below we see an image and text showing the muscle system as they understood it.

During this time, they established the foundations of clinical practice, including supervised pharmacies, hospital systems and experimental medicine.   

The image above shows an impression of an operation being carried out. Clearly there they are not using the instruments below which were used for trepanning or trepanation – drilling a hole in the human skull!

A great contribution of theirs was to collect, translate into Arabic and collate knowledge from disparate sources. It was from their summaries and encyclopaedias that western doctors learned of Greek medicine, making it more systematic and accessible. For example, Ibn Sina created the Canon of Medicine, a five-book encyclopaedia, which was translated into Latin and disseminated in printed form throughout Europe. Below we see a depiction of him examining a patient.

During this time Europe, in stark contrast, was going through the so-called Dark Ages. It was largely the Arab Golden Age that contributed to development in mediaeval Europe towards a culture of free inquiry and rational scientific thinking.

 We owe much to the contributions to knowledge made at that time.