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By Aileen Das For a doctor is a man worth many otherscutting out arrows and applying soothing remedies.- Homer, Iliad XI.514–15Warfare was a reality for most ancient Romans and Greeks. Free men were often recruited to serve in the army either at home or abroad to further the expansion of their city or empire’s sovereign territory. Arrows were frequently used in pre-modern combat because of the relative ease of their manufacture; they could be cheaply produced from material ready at hand, such as bone, glass, wood, bronze, and iron. For those attending the wounded on or off the battlefield, it was important to know how to extract arrows and treat their wounds. Homer emphasizes the value of this area of medical knowledge when he exclaims that a doctor who possesses the skills to “cut out arrows” and “apply soothing remedies” is highly prized (Iliad XI.514–15).While medical texts from antiquity offer detailed surgical instructions for extracting arrows from patients,some non-medical authors advocate the use of pharmaceuticals to remove these weapons. For example, in the Natural Histories (8.41), Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) remarks that the perennial dittany is useful for extracting arrowheads, because it causes the point to fall out when placed on the wound. He adds that dittany's power was first discovered by hunters, who observed that arrows became dislodged from wounded stags who grazed on this plant.[caption id="attachment_6577" align="alignleft" width="191"] Cretan Dittany (Origanum dictamnus). Image Credit: Wellcome Library, London.[/caption]The engineer Philo of Byzantium (c. 280–220 BC) recommends the application of honey and cerate--wax mixed with oil, lard, and sometimes other medicinal ingredients--to treat arrow wounds (Mechanical Syntax V.96.15–19). These substances are styptics, having the ability to staunch blood flow and bind flesh. Moreover, honey is recognized today as having anti-bacterial properties, and thus would have helped prevent infection in arrow wounds.Medical treatises from the medieval Islamicate world contain a range of recipes for extracting arrows. Largely based on ancient Greek medical sources, these treaties were rendered into Arabic by translators working in Baghdad from the eighth to tenth centuries.But authors often included information derived from non-Greek sources or from their own experience. In his manual Book for al-Manṣūr (VII.25), the Persian doctor Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (d. c. 925, known as Rhazes in Latin), who treated patients in hospitals in Ray, Iran and Baghdad, mentions several ‘extractive drugs’ (adwiya jādhiba) that possess the power to draw out thorns and arrowheads from flesh. Each drug is made of a honey base and compounded respectively with ammoniac salt, narcissus bulb, and reed root. None of these recipes appear in surviving Greek sources, so al-Rāzī may have added them on his own authority.Certainly, al-Rāzī had some experience of dealing with arrow wounds, for in the Book of Experiences, a record of around 900 cases that al-Rāzī personally treated or supervised, a student describes al-Rāzī’s ecounter with a male patient wounded in the thigh by an arrow.[1] In this case, al-Rāzī does not attempt to extract the arrow from the man’s body, but recommends a drying diet to alleviate his pain. It is possible that al-Rāzī never actually employed in practice the extractive drugs listed in Book for al-Manṣūr, but instead copied these recipes from either a lost Greek or contemporary Arabic source.Compared to other Arabic medical writers, Ibn Sīna (or Avicenna, 980–1037) provides the most complex list of extractive drug recipes for removing arrows in his influential medical encyclopedia the Canon of Medicine. Born in what is now Uzbekistan, Ibn Sīnā studied medicine as a young man and served as a courtier to several local rulers. Ibn Sīnā relates several extractive drug recipes that are prepared from plant and animal materials (IV.4.2.10). Like al-Rāzī, Ibn Sīnā highlights the extractive powers of reed root and narcissus bulb, but he does not instruct the reader to mix these plant products with honey. Rather, the former should be crushed on the wound and the latter, added to a plaster of gillyflower and birthroot.[caption id="attachment_6578" align="alignright" width="300"] Bulb of Narcissus species (Daffodil). Image Credit: Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Wellcome Images.[/caption]Ibn Sīnā also advises the use of skinned frogs, which supposedly has the power to uproot teeth. And so, when placed on arrow wounds, it will draw out even the most adherent points. Ibn Sīnā includes the recipes as a supplement to his surgical instructions, but does not disclose whether he tried any of them in his own practice. As in antiquity, surgery remained the most reliable, if risky, method of getting the point.[1] Al-Rāzī, Kitāb al-Taǧārib: maʿa dirāsa fī manhaǧ al-baḥṯ al-ʿilmī ʿinda al-Rāzī, Ḫālid Aḥmad Ḥarbī (ed), (Alexandria 2006), 294.&#160;