Researching and writing a feature story focusing on people is difficult when you can’t physically meet those people. Fortunately, during the COVID stayat-home order period when this story was written, the people profiled in this article availed themselves by phone, text and email at all hours of the day and evening to enable me to obtain the interviews and information I needed. All of them supplied their own photographs as well, so you are seeing them as they wish to be portrayed.

Several of the local Muslims also made me aware of some links between ancient Islamic medicine and the everyday situations we are encountering during today’s pandemic.

Ibn Sina, who lived from 980 to 1037, was a Persian medical scholar. He theorized that some diseases were spread by organisms that were too small to be seen, and to prevent humans from transmitting these diseases to others, Sina devised a method for isolating people for 40 days. He called this method al-Arba’iniya, or “the forty” in Arabic.

Venetian traders learned of Sina’s method and took the knowledge back to their homeland, where the process was called quarantena, or “the forty” in Italian. This is where the word “quarantine” comes from.

The first widespread use of alcohol as a disinfectant also occurred during the Islamic “Golden Age.” Baghdad’s first hospital was built in 805 and, following the advice of early Islamic physician Al Razi, the hospital began using alcohol as an antiseptic on wounds before, during and after surgeries. The practice increased the survival rate of surgery patients and spread throughout the Muslim world.

Europeans later followed suit, and the name “alcohol” is an adaptation of the substance’s original Arabic name al-Kuhul, which means “the essence.”

–David Blanchette