NOOR JOURNAL

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Editor's Note
 

An Old Book, Still Speaking
 

By Dr. Qaisar J. Qayyum, Chief Editor, Noor Journal
 

There is a book that sits on the shelves of old hakim clinics across the Subcontinent, often unread by the physicians who inherited it. Its title page describes it as "the most distinctive and authoritative work on materia medica in the Subcontinent", a claim that sounds like publisher's enthusiasm until one actually opens it.
 

Makhzan al-Mufradat al-Ma'ruf Khawass al-Adwiya — "The Treasury of Single Drugs" — was originally compiled by Hakim Muhammad Kabir al-Din, subsequently revised by Hakim Muhammad Anwar Khan Lodhi, with additional modern research by Hakim Sayyid Safi al-Din Ali, and published by Sheikh Muhammad Bashir & Sons, Lahore. It covers botanical, mineral, and animal-origin medicines in alphabetical monographs, each specifying temperament, pharmacological actions, clinical indications, and dose. A botanical glossary cross-references every drug across Arabic, Persian, Urdu, English, and Latin nomenclature. Appendices tabulate actions and doses for rapid clinical reference. This is not a decorative volume. It is a working reference, built for use.
 

What makes it worth revisiting is not sentiment but methodology. The classificatory system, drugs ranked by temperament across four degrees of warmth and cold, encodes functional pharmacodynamic information in pre-modern language. The pharmaceutical terminology is precise: steam bath, fumigation, insufflation, oleation, distillation, each defined and distinguished. The drug monographs follow a consistent structure that any trained pharmacist would recognize as serious, even if the theoretical framework differs from what they were taught.
 

Take سونف — fennel, Foeniculum vulgare, listed in the Makhzan for colic, dyspepsia, hiccup, and dysuria, with a warm and dry temperament. The European Medicines Agency today formally recognizes fennel as an effective carminative and expectorant. Recent pharmacological studies confirm its antispasmodic, anti-inflammatory, and digestive properties, traceable to specific volatile compounds — trans-anethole, fenchone, estragole, that the Makhzan's compiler could not have named, but whose effects he recorded accurately enough for modern researchers to identify. One entry does not validate an entire text. But it raises a reasonable question: how many others hold up equally well?
 

The Noor Journal intends to find out, one entry at a time, cross-referencing classical indications against current literature, reporting honestly what the evidence shows. We are not in the business of defending tradition for its own sake, nor of dismissing it for the same reason. We are in the business of verification.
 

We cannot do this alone. We invite physicians, pharmacists, hakims, and researchers with training in both the Unani tradition and modern clinical science to contribute. Take a drug entry. Search the literature. Report what you find. The methodology is straightforward; the need is genuine.
 

The Makhzan has waited long enough to be read properly. We begin now.
 

Dr. Qaisar J. Qayyum, MD Chief Editor, Noor Journal of Complementary and Contemporary Medicine Clinical Assistant Professor, Oklahoma, USA

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