The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb)

The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb) is the great systematic medical encyclopedia of its age, organizing the theory and practice of medicine into a comprehensive whole. Within its author's larger system it sits alongside a metaphysics in which the self is an immaterial, self-aware substance and all reality emanates from a single Necessary Being.

The medical work proceeds by rigorous classification of principles, causes, symptoms, and treatments. It also acknowledges the influence of imagination and emotion on bodily states, an early thread in psychosomatic thinking, while its companion philosophy advances the "floating man" argument that self-awareness is immediate and independent of the senses.

Building on Aristotle and the emanationism transmitted through al-Farabi, the author produced the most systematic synthesis of Greek philosophy and Islamic metaphysics of his time. His claim that consciousness is foundational rather than derived from matter seeds a long current of thought linking mind, soul, and the structure of reality.