Massage
One of the greatest Persian medics was Avicenna, also known as Ibn Sina, who lived from 980AD to 1037AD. His works included a comprehensive collection and systematisation of the fragmentary and unorganised Greco-Roman medical literature that had been translated Arabic by that time, augmented by notes from his own experiences. One of his books, "Al-Qānūn fī aṭ-Ṭibb" (The Canon of Medicine) has been called the most famous single book in the history of medicine in both East and West. Avicenna excelled in the logical assessment of conditions and comparison of symptoms and took special note of analgesics and their proper use as well as other methods of relieving pain, including massage.
Principle of individuation
The late Roman philosopher Boethius (480–524) touches upon the subject in his Isagoge, where he says that things which are individuals and are discrete only in number, differ only by accidental properties. The Persian philosopher Avicenna (980-1037) first introduced a term which was later translated into Latin as "signatum", meaning 'determinate individual'. Avicenna argues that a nature is not of itself individual, the relation between it and individuality is an accidental one, and we must look for its source not in its essence, but among accidental attributes such as quantity, quality, space and time. However, he did not work out any definite or detailed theory of individuation. His successor Averroes (1126–1198) argued that matter is numerically one, since it is undetermined in itself and has no definite boundaries. However, since it is divisible, this must be caused by quantity, and matter must therefore have the potential for determination in three dimensions (in the same way a rough and unhewn lump of marble has the potential to be sculpted into a statue).