"The history of medicine is the history of the dialectic between action and reflection, and of how to make decisions under conditions of opacity. In the medieval Mediterranean, Maimonides, Avicenna, Al-Ruhawi and the Syriac physicians like Hunain Ibn Ishaq were both philosophers and physicians. Physicians in the medieval Semitic world were called Al-Hakim, "the sage", or "practitioner of wisdom", a synonym of philosopher or rabbi. Even in an earlier period there was a group of Hellenized individuals who stood precisely halfway between medicine and the practice of philosophy - the great sceptical philosopher Sixth Empiricus was himself a physician, a member of the empiricist sceptical school."