World of Chemistry on Abu Bakr Mohammad ibn Zakariyya al-Razi
Abu Bakr Mohammad ibn Zakariyya al-Razi, also known as Rhazes in the Latin West, was born at Rayy, Persia (near present-day Tehran, Iran) in 865. Early on in al-Razi's life, he became interested in singing and music, but soon his interests took residence in the study of alchemy and chemistry, philosophy, logic, mathematics, physics, and medicine. Al-Razi studied from a student of Hunayn Ibn Ishaq, who was well versed in the ancient Greek, Persian, and Indian systems of medicine and other subjects; he also studied under Ali Ibn Rabban.
Al-Razi was first appointed as head of the first Royal Hospital at Rayy, due to his fame in medicine. Soon thereafter, al-Razi moved to the Muqtadari Hospital in Baghdad as the head during the reign of the Adhud-Daulah. Adhud-Daulah held al-Razi responsible for choosing the best building site for the Muqtadari Hospital. He is said to have chosen the position by hanging pieces of meat in various parts of Baghdad and noted which putrefaction of meat was the slowest. He chose the spot of the least rotten meat as the building site for the hospital.
Al-Razi practiced for over 35 years and wrote about 200 books, of which more than half are medical and 21 concern alchemy. His medical commentaries contributed mainly to the fields of ophthalmology, obstetrics, and gynecology. He also wrote on other subjects, such as physics, mathematics, astronomy, and optics. Al-Razi's medical works include monographs, one of which was the first treatise on smallpox, chicken-pox, and measles, distinguishing between smallpox and measles. Later this was treatise was twice translated into Latin in the eighteenth century when interest rose in inoculation or variolation around 1720 following the description of the procedure in Turkey by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
The most famous of al-Razi's works is the al- Hawi or The Comprehensive Book, which includes Greek, Syrian, and early Arabic medical knowledge and also virtually every topic of medical importance in their entirety. Al-Razi took meticulous notes from all the books available to him on medicine, combined with his own medical experience. It was originally comprised of 20 volumes, of which 10 have survived.
In addition to his work in the medical field, al-Razi also compounded medicines, and later in his life, turned to experimental and theoretical sciences. He took careful notes in great detail about several chemical reactions and also gave full descriptions of and designs for about 20 instruments used in chemical investigations. His book Kitab-al-Asrar concerns the preparation of chemical materials and their utilization. Another book called Liber Experimentorum, which was translated in Latin, al-Razi divides substances into plants, animals, and minerals, giving way for organic and inorganic chemistry. As a chemist, by mixing different acids, he was the first to produce sulfuric acid, and also prepared alcohol by fermenting sweet products.
Al-Razi made a variety of other contributions to the field of medicine. He wrote a few smaller treatises on colic, on stones in the kidney and bladder, on curing disease within an hour (such as headache, toothache, hemorrhoids, and dysentery in small children), on children's diseases, on diabetes, on food for the sick, on maladies of the joints, on medicine for those unable to see a physician, on medical aphorisms, and on medical diagnoses and treatments. He was the first to use music as therapy by arranging his students in concentric circles with the most advanced in the inner circle. During a specific period when roses bloomed, al-Razi noticed head swelling occurring, and he then apparently became the first to relate hay fever to the scent of roses.
In addition to his contributions to the field of medicine, al-Razi was a Hakim, which means he was also a philosopher besides an alchemist. The basic elements in his philosophical system are the creator, spirit, matter, space, and time. He discusses their characteristics in detail and his concepts of space and time as constituting a continuum are outstanding. These views, on the other hand, were criticized by other Muslim scholars of the time. Most of al-Razi's philosophical and antireligious works are lost.
Al-Razi moved at various times to different cities, especially between Rayy and Baghdad. He ultimately returned to Rayy, where he died in 925.
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