Loiasis in unani medicine

ABSTRACT

Loiasis is a disease, which has been discussed in classical literature of Unani Medicine as 'Illa al-Baqar. Unfortunately this fact has been intentionally or unintentionally ignored by historians and its discovery has been attributed to French surgeon, Mongin who lived during 18th century A.D. In this paper, related Arabic texts have been reproduced to claim that the first definitive record is that of Abu al-Qasim al- Zahrawi [d.1031 A.D.] who described the disease in his famous book Kitab al-Tasrif with necessary details. Later, the disease was again discussed by Abu Marwan 'Abd al-Malik ibn Zuhr and Amin al-Dawla Abu al- Faraj ibn Ya'qub ibn Ishaq ibn al-Quff al-Karaki who lived in 12th and 13th centuries A.D., respectively