3. MUSLIM CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE

~ 109 ~ fifth and fourth centuries B.C. However, very little is known about his life. The historians of later times have estimated that Hippocrates was probably born in 460 B.C. and died in 377 B.C. Some historians, on the other hand, even have doubts about his being a historical figure. It has also been questioned whether the books on philosophy and medicine supposedly written by him were not actually written by someone else and later attributed to him.” 52 Galen is considered the second most important philosopher and physicist of this period of antiquity. He was born probably in A.D. 129 and died in A.D. 199. Galen had to face stiff opposition in Rome, and most of his writings were destroyed. The remainder would also have been lost to posterity if the Arabs had not collected them in the ninth century and translated them into Arabic. These Arabic translations were later to reach Europe, in the eleventh century, where they were translated from Arabic into Latin. The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1984) concludes its article on Galen: “Little is known of Galen’s final years.”53