As the age of the medical works of Charaka and Susruta is incontestably
much more ancient than that of any other work on the subject (except the
Ayur Veda)--as we shall see when we come to consider the science of the
Hindoos--this in itself would be sufficient to show that the Arabians
were certainly not the originators of either medical or chemical
science.

We should not forget that it is only to their own works and their
translations, chiefly by the Greeks, we owe our knowledge of the state
of Arabian science, and that it is only in rare cases that we have given
a list of works consulted, so that we can gather the sources from which
their knowledge was derived. It would scarcely be imagined, from reading
the works of Roger Bacon, or of Newton, that they had derived some, at
least, of their knowledge from Arabian sources; and yet such is known to
have been the case with them both.

Let us now glance backwards from the Arabians to the Greeks.

It is supposed that the first translations from the Greek authors were
made for the Caliphs about 745 A.D., and were first translated into
Syriac, and then into Arabic. The works of Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy,
Hippocrates, Galen, and Dioscorides are known to have been translated
under the reign of Al-Mansour.

Granting for the moment that the first knowledge of the sciences was
obtained by the Arabians from the Greeks, we are at once face to face
with the question. From whence did the Greeks obtain their knowledge? To
any careful reader it will be clear that Grecian science and philosophy,
like Grecian theology, was not of native birth. It is comparatively well