Letter to the Editor: Five thousand years of minimal access surgery

We have read with interest the article ‘Five thousand years of minimal access surgery: 3000BC to 1850: early instruments for viewing body cavities’¹ and we want to congratulate the esteemed author for the successful description of the subject. But in this article, a point has been neglected that in the subject of surgery in the Middle Ages, the authors only referred to Zahrawi and it has been suggested to the reader that during the 8th to 15th centuries AD, in the Islamic Empire and the Arabic and Persian works, Zahrawi had been the only one who dealt with the subject of surgery.

The most important book overlooked by the authors of the article discussing the subject of surgery in the Middle Ages is Kitāb al-‘Umda fi ‘l-ğirā$h_{·}$a or Basics in the Art of Surgery by Ibn al-Quff (d. 1286 AD), a famous medieval physician.²

In his book, Ibn al-Quff has mentioned everything that a surgeon needs within 20 chapters. In the introduction to this book, he has discussed the reason for writing this book as the upset of one of his contemporary surgeons about the lack of a reference book about his profession.³ Issues raised in Ibn al-Quff's book seem to be much more detailed than Zahrawi’s views. So, this book is really worth studying.