"The hospitals of the ninth century were quite different from the plastic-and-steel environments we see today. But there are nevertheless similarities: Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, a physician working from medieval Baghdad and one of the most significant figures in the history of medicine, worked to many of the same principles, informed by the same classical medical scholars such as Hippocrates or Galen, that govern our own health care."
"For instance, he made use of control groups, suggesting his colleagues use a new treatment on only half a group of patients to understand the difference a proposed medicine might cause. When asked where authorities should build a new bimaristan - a medieval Islamic hospital - he suggested meat should be hung around the city and wherever it took the longest to rot, he reasoned, was the best spot. Al-Rāzī also had a publishing history that would be the envy of many modern scholars - writing more than 200 works on many different fields of medicine and philosophy. Hospitals have been important centres of research - as well as health care - ever since."
Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, a medieval Baghdad physician, applied empirical methods such as control groups to evaluate treatments. He recommended environmental observation for hospital placement by hanging meat to identify the least corrosive location. He authored more than 200 works across medicine and philosophy. He relied on classical authorities like Hippocrates and Galen while advancing clinical practice. Medieval bimaristans functioned as centers for both patient care and medical research. Practices from the ninth century show continuities with modern principles of clinical evaluation, hospital planning, and scholarly dissemination.
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