Twenty-six years have passed since The Physician was first published. I am grateful to the many millions of people who have kept the book in print during that time by reading it in 32 languages. It is now being developed as a motion picture.
I am happy that this newest edition of The Physician is offered to readers of the English language, internationally and in America, by my publisher, Blanca Rosa Roca of Barcelona eBooks.
The Physician is a story in which only two characters, Ibn Sina and al-Juzjani, are taken from life. There was a shah named Ala-al-Dawla, but so little information survives that the character of that name is based on an amalgam of shahs.
The maristan was depicted from descriptions of the medieval Azudi hospital of Baghdad.
Much of the flavor and fact of the eleventh century is forever lost. Where the record was nonexistent or obscured, I did not hesitate to fictionalize; thus, it should be understood that this is a work of the imagination and not a slice of history. Any errors, large or small, made in my striving to faithfully recreate a sense of time and place, are my own. Yet this novel could not have been written without the help of a number of libraries and individuals.
I am grateful to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for granting me faculty privileges to all of its libraries, and to Edla Holm of the Interlibrary Loans Office at that university.
The Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester was a valuable resource for books about medicine and medical history.
Smith College was kind enough to classify me as an “area scholar” so I might use the William Allan Neilson Library, and I found the Werner Josten Library at Smith's Center for the Performing Arts to be an excellent source of details about clothing and costumes.
Barbara Zalenski, Librarian of the Belding Memorial Library of Ashfield, Massachusetts, never failed me, no matter how much searching she faced in fulfilling a request for a book.
Kathleen M. Johnson, Reference Librarian at the Baker Library of Harvard's Graduate School of Business Administration, sent me materials on the history of money in the Middle Ages.
I should also like to thank the librarians and libraries of Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, Brandeis University, Clark University, the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, the Boston Public Library, and the Boston Library Consortium.
Richard M. Jakowski, V.M.D., Animal Pathologist at the Tufts-New England Veterinary Medical Center, in North Grafton, Massachusetts, compared the internal anatomy of pigs and humans for me, as did Susan L. Carpenter, Ph.D., post-doctoral fellow at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories of the National Institute of Health, in Hamilton, Montana.
Over a period of several years, Rabbi Louis A. Rieser of Temple Israel of Greenfield, Massachusetts, answered question after question about Judaism.
Rabbi Philip Kaplan of the Associated Synagogues of Boston explained the details of kosher slaughtering to me.
The Graduate School of Geography at Clark University furnished me with maps and information about the geography of the eleventh-century world.
The faculty of the Classics Department at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, helped me with several Latin translations.
Robert Ruhloff, blacksmith at Ashfield, Massachusetts, informed me about the blue patterned steel of India and introduced me to the blacksmiths’ journal, The Anvil’s Ring.
Gouveneur Phelps of Ashfield told me about salmon fishing in Scotland.
Two of my former literary agents, Patricia Schartle Myrer and Eugene H. Winick, provided encouragement. It was Pat Myrer’s suggestion that I write about the dynasty of a single family over many generations, a suggestion that led to the writing of the other two books of the Cole trilogy, Shaman and Matters of Choice.
Herman Gollob was an ideal editor and made the original publication of this book a meaningful experience.
For the original publication of this novel, more than a quarter of a century ago, Lise Gordon helped to copy-edit the manuscript and Jamie Gordon and Michael Gordon gave me love and moral support, and their warmth and spirit are unchanged.
Then and to this day, Lorraine Gordon has provided criticism, sweet reason, steadiness and love. In my eighty-sixth year, and in the sixty-first year of our marriage, I am exceedingly grateful for her presence in my life.
Noah Gordon
Dedham, Massachusetts
May 3, 2012