Loiasis in Unani Medicine

Loiasis is a disease, which has been discussed in classical literature of Unani Medicine as‘Illa al-Baqar. Unfortunately this fact has been intentionally or unintentionally ignored by historians and its discovery has been attributed to French surgeon, Mongin who lived during 18th century A.D. In this paper, related Arabic texts have been reproduced to claim that the first definitive record is that of Ab al-Qsim al-Zahrw (d.1031 A.D.) who described the disease in his famous book Kitb al-Tasrf with necessary details. Later, the disease was again discussed by Ab Marwn ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Zuhr and Amn al-Dawla Ab al-Faraj ibn Ya‘qb ibn Ishq ibn al-Quff al-Karak who lived in 12th and 13th centuries A.D., respectively.