November 15, 180 2:00pm
I've been trapped  here in Galen's time for about a week now.  I'm not sure if I can take this.  Galen won't stop talking about the four humors.  I wake up and yawn and he says "Must be some extra blood because  you are  exhaling warm and moist air."  I mean this guy is crazy.  Galen does have a shop that I can use to work on my new time machine though.  I hope to have it completed by the year 195.  The last one only took two years to make but I did have modern technology.  I guess this will be my last entry for a while seeing as how I won't be learning anything very new in the next few years.

November 15, 180 2:20pm
An odd thing happened just now.  I found a watch that looks similar to the one I just had stolen.  Have I been here before?  I don't remember it but it is possible, Galen had some amazing wine after all.  What is even more odd is the note that was with the watch.  It says "hold on to it this time."  Now I am positive I have been here before, or maybe in the future that is now the past, but I did it when I was not in the now.  Oh darn these temporal paradoxes and how they are impossible to explain.  Anyway, now that I have my time device back I will continue on to  the time of Avicenna and see what he has to say about, well medicine in general.


November 15, 1020 2:30pm
I've made it to Hamadan and I think Avicenna is in the Prime Minister's house.  I asked the guard if I could speak with Avicenna and he was most accommodating.  I'll write more when I know more.


November 15, 1020 5:00pm
I am amazed.  Avicenna has had an exciting life.  When he has free time he writes his books.  At last count there were somewhere around ninety-nine of them.  The key there is in his free time though.  He has little to none, unless you count the four hours a night that he sleeps.  Most of his time is spent diagnosing peoples illnesses and performing his duties as Prime Minister.  It seems that Avicenna came upon his position because he cured the local leader of colic.  Back to his books though.  Of his ninety-nine books it seems that sixteen of them were devoted completely to medicine.  Avicenna was an expert on all aspects of medicine it would seem.  All of his books were focused toward a different aspect of medicine but they all contained a vast amount of information.  The Qanun for example was divided into five sub-books.  These books covered topics from doctoral principals to a breakdown of every part of the body to simple and compound medicines.  It is important to note that Avicenna kept the Hippocratic tradition alive by writing these books to pass along his knowledge.  He knew that diseases could be pathogenically passed along and he made sure to write about that.  I will write more when I get home but for now I hear a lot of banging coming from Avicenna's front door so I am going to go.


November 15, 2004 7:00pm
After returning home I began looking up information on Avicenna, after playing with all the modern technology I have missed.  As I was leaving I think Avicenna was being arrested.  In one of the sources I looked at it said he was arrested and put in jail for working for Amir Shamsud-Dawala.  Fortunately I didn't have to return to rescue him because Amir soon stifled the revolt that threw Avicenna into prison and they released him.  My searching also brought up a lot of results in Latin.  It seems that Avicenna's work was prized for helping to revitalize the medical practices in the West.  There is not much written about that though, just a few notes here and there.  The Latin translations of Avicenna's works were prized by many people for their recommendations about procedures for testing new drugs and diagnosing diseases.  It would seem that with all I have learned about the Hippocratic Corpus and its purpose that Avicenna mastered the practice.  His knowledge of medicine was vast and he did everything he could to pass down the knowledge he had to future generations.

November 15, 2004 9:00pm
I have discovered a note I must have left myself in the past, or future me left in the past, or... oh whatever.  It seems someone in this class has also invented time travel and they were the ones who mugged me.  I believe I told people in not to do this because I would have to go back and stop them.  I went ahead and created the time machine in Galen's time and used it to go back to a minute before I was mugged.  I then slipped a taser in my pocket to hit the mugger with, this is just like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.  I also had to make sure not to cross my own path, which was hard because I was putting the taser in my own pocket, because crossing my own path would definitely end the universe.  If you don't believe me just make reference to Back to the Future.  Anyway I once again was mugged but this time I had my taser and I stunned the perpetrator.  Now I can't remember who it was because I don't seem to have that memory.  I still have the memory of being stuck in the past.  Darn those paradoxes.  I guess we will never know who I had to taser.

Disclaimer:  Do you believe me now?  I will do what it takes to keep this power I have.  Just call me the Microsoft of the time industry.

Authors Note: I used my sources to give me a basic background of Avicenna.  I then took the overall information to create an image I understood and used that overview as the template for my episode.  I learned most of the information from my web source.

Works Cited:
Monzur Ahmed, Ibn Sina (Avicenna) - doctor of doctors, The Muslim Directory Online, http://www.ummah.net/history/scholars/ibn_sina.html,  This site contains a background on Avicenna and a history of his work.
Lindberg, Beginnings, p. #331, 334,  Provides information on the writings of Avicenna

Image is a black and white drawing of Avicenna
Website: Ibn Sina
Weblink: http://www.zia.rahin.iwarp.com/ibnsina.htm

 E-mail Nate Wiles