Ibn Zuhr

Ibn Zuhr, known in Latin as Avenzoar, was an Arab physician, surgeon and poet of twelfth-century al-Andalus, born near Seville into the Banu Zuhr family, which produced six generations of physicians. He was known for grounding medicine in rational, empirical observation rather than pure inherited authority, and he is credited with performing an early experimental tracheotomy on an animal before any comparable procedure on a human patient. His major work, Kitab al-Taysir, gave detailed clinical descriptions of cancers and inflammatory conditions and was translated into Latin and Hebrew, remaining influential in Europe into the eighteenth century.