title: Geriatric management in medieval Persian medicine.
abstract: In Iran, a large group of patients are elderly people and they intend to have natural remedies as treatment. These remedies are rooted in historical of Persian and humoral medicine with a backbone of more than 1000 years. The current study was conducted to draw together medieval pharmacological information related to geriatric medicine from some of the most often manuscripts of traditional Persian medicine. Moreover, we investigated the efficacy of medicinal plants through a search of the PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar databases. In the medieval Persian documents, digestible and a small amount of food such as chicken broth, honey, fig and plum at frequent intervals as well as body massage and morning unctioning are highly recommended. In the field of pharmacotherapy, 35 herbs related to 25 families were identified. Plants were classified as tonic, anti-aging, appetizer, memory and mood enhancer, topical analgesic and laxative as well as health improvement agents. Other than historical elucidation, this paper presents medical and pharmacological approaches that medieval Persian practitioners applied to deal with geriatric complications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Traditional Medicine, School of Traditional Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad ; Research Institute for Islamic and Complementary Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences and Health Services, Tehran ; Research Center for Traditional Medicine and History of Medicine, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.
authors.forename: Morteza
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Emami
authors.affiliation: Department of Traditional Medicine, School of Traditional Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad ; Department of Traditional Medicine, School of Traditional Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Omid
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Sadeghpour
authors.affiliation: Department of Traditional Pharmacy, School of PharmacyPharmacy, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran ; Research Office for History of Persian Medicine, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.
authors.forename: Mohammad M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Zarshenas
keywords: Geriatric medicine; herbal therapy; medieval persia