Database: Healthcare
During the ninth century, Persian physicians brought to Baghdad to heal the caliphs' ailments were given funds to open and operate six general hospitals, or bimaristans (places of the sick). These large structures were open to all and doubled as medical schools. The medicine practiced in them was founded on the twin pillars of traditional expertise and empirical observation, with the latter becoming more and more prominent over time.
Many works of Ancient Greek, Roman and Persian physicians such as Hippocrates and Galen were translated into Arabic as early as the eighth century. They provided a theoretical framework known as "humoral medicine". in which illness represented an imbalance in the four humors (blood, phlegm, and yellow and black biles), chemical systems that were thought to regulate human behavior. Practitioners therefore needed to adjust this balance through bloodletting, the use of laxatives, or changes in diet or environment. The result was a holistic approach to medical treatment.
But Baghdadi physicians were not blind followers of tradition. Most treatments were tried and tested, including writing magical formulae on medicine bowls, and their efficacy was then rationalized by humoral theory. One of the most famous hospital directors of Baghdad, Abu Bakr al-Razi (854-935), placed great emphasis on observation and experimentation, arguing that questioning traditional views was the basis of medicine. This innovative state of mind led him to distinguish between smallpox and measles for the first time.