Prophetic medicine

Recommendations

In hadith, Muhammad recommended the use of practices such as honey and hijama (wet cupping) for healing. He generally opposed the use of cauterization for causing "pain and menace to a patient". Other items with beneficial effects attributed to Muhammad, and standard features on traditional medicine in the Islamicate world, include olive oil; dates; miswak as a necessity for oral health and Nigella sativa or "black seed" or "black cumin" and its oils. These items are still sold in Islamic centers or sellers of other Islamic goods.

Black seeds

Abu Hurayra quoted Muhammad saying: "Utilize the black seed for without a doubt, it is a cure for all sicknesses aside from death." (Hadith Al-Bukhari 7:591)

Camel urine and milk

According to a hadith recorded in the 4th chapter (Wudu') of Sahih al-Bukhari, Muhammad had used camel urine to treat people:

Some people of` Ukl or `Uraina tribe came to Medina and its climate did not suit them. So the Prophet ordered them to go to the herd of (Milch) camels and to drink their urine and milk. So they went as directed and after they became healthy, they killed the shepherd of the Prophet and drove away all the camels.

The event has also been recorded in Sahih Muslim, History of the Prophets and Kings and Kitāb aṭ-ṭabaqāt al-kabīr.

Henna

According to Hadith compiler Abu Dawood's work Sunan Abu Dawood, Muhammad had advised the application of henna in case of leg pain:

Narrated by Salmah, the maid-servant of the Prophet, said: No one complained to the Prophet of a headache but he told him to get himself cupped, or of a pain in his legs but he told him to dye them with henna.

— Abi Dawud Book 28, Hadith 3849

In Ibn Majah's Sunan ibn Majah, Muhammad has been described as using henna for external injuries:

Salma Umm Rafi', the freed slave woman of the Prophet, said: "The Prophet did not suffer any injury or thorn- prick but he would apply henna to it"

— Ibn Majah Vol. 4, Book 31, Hadith 3502

Honey

The value of honey is traced to specific mention of its virtues in the Quran, an-Nahl (the Bees) and not just Muhammad. (Quran 68–69)

Muhammad is quoted as, "Healing is in three things: cupping, a gulp of honey or cauterization, (branding with fire) but I forbid my followers to use cauterization (branding with fire)."

Truffles

Truffles have been cited within multiple hadiths for eye medicine. Muhammad refers to them as 'manna' in many of these hadiths. The word Manna means a form of sustenance granted by a divine source; this is often referred to in the context of the food the Israelites received in the Hebrew Bible.

"Truffles are 'Manna' which Allah, the Exalted the Majestic, sent to the people of Israil, and its juice is a medicine for the eye"

House flies

The Prophet said, "If a house fly falls in the drink of anyone of you, he should dip it (in the drink) and take it out, for one of its wings has a disease and the other has the cure for the disease."

— Muhammad al-Bukhari, Sahih Bukhari

Contemporary practice

Islamic Republic of Iran

Some clerics in Iran promote a controversial form of prophetic or "Islamic" medicine, based on sometimes rather unlikely quotations attributed to historic Muslim religious figures, and on Iranian traditional medicine.

Abbas Tabrizian, a prominent proponent, has faced official action for selling unapproved treatments; he has been widely criticized, and it thought to have few supporters. His burning of a copy of "Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine", a medical reference book, was condemned by Grand Ayatollah Jafar Sobhani, who said that

"insulting medical learning is against the spirit of Islam and Islam's call for [learning] science... Criticizing the content [of a book] is appropriate, but burning is an act of ignorance, and many libraries were set on fire based on wrong motivations in the past".

Ayatollah Alireza Arafi, who runs Iran's seminaries, also condemned the book-burning. Abbas Tabrizian was widely ridiculed for a suggestion that COVID-19 could be prevented by applying a cotton ball soaked in violet oil to the anus. The IRNA news agency reported that Abbas Tabrizian, who has often promoted his remedies as "Islamic medicine" in opposition to standard medicine, has also claimed that COVID-19 is God's revenge against those who had bothered him.

An arrest warrant has been issued for Morteza Kohansal, a follower of Abbas Tabrizian who visited the coronavirus section of a hospital in Iran without wearing protective gear, and applied an unknown substance he described as "Prophet's Perfume" to patients.

Using "Islamic medicine" has caused some Iranian clerics to delay getting standard medical treatment. Ayatollah Hashem Bathaie Golpayegani announced that he had been infected by COVID-19, but had cured himself, three weeks before being hospitalized. He died two days later. Ayatollah Haeri-Shirazi and Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi were both also said by their families to have long delayed seeking standard medical, using "Islamic medicine" instead. Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi, who had been considered a possible successor Supreme Leader of Iran, died of cancer. His son Ala Shahroudi later said that "The so-called Islamic doctors had convinced my father to ignore what modern physicians said about his illness and how to treat it... My father underwent surgery in 2017. Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, secretly visited and advised him to ignore what the Islamic doctors say, and listen to the modern-day physicians... Nevertheless, my father ignored the leader's recommendation, and continued to trust the so-called Islamic Medicine experts."