[ comparative study on uterus and kidney inflammation and their treatments described in the book [Hidayat al-Muta'allimin fit-Tib] with modern medicine]

[Hidayat al-Muta'allimin fit-Tib] [A Guide to Students of Medicine] is one of the oldest Persian medical books written in Persian by Akhawayni around llth century in Bukhara. In this book, each disease is described as a separate monograph including signs and symptoms as well as treatment orders. Two of the well explained monographs are concerned to inflammation of uterus and kidney. The purpose of this study was to compare the signs, symptoms, and treatment procedures written in the above mentioned book with what written in modern medical texts for Pelvic Inflammatory Disease [PID] and kidney abscess. For this purpose, a comparative study on signs, symptoms, and treatment procedures of these diseases with modern medicine was done. According to this study, the inflammation of uterus in primary stage showed some similarities with PID and in final stage with tubo- ovarian abscess. The inflammation of kidney at its first stage had a lot of resemblance with pyelonephritis, in advanced stage with interarenal or perinephric abscess, and in final stage with renal failure. The treatment procedures in the old traditional medicine were originally based on herbal treatments that are completely different with modern antibiotic therapy. However, the anti-inflammatory and anti-infective herbal drugs used in this book are in support of the antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory data reported for the most of these herbs in scientific literatures. The results point out that the ancient Iranian physicians had a reasonable concept of the infective diseases. The herbs used by traditional physicians have ethnopharmacological potential for further research to develop new antibacterial and anti-inflammatory agents from these plants