Al-Razi
A physician who trusted observation over authority, and reason over revelation, further than almost anyone of his age dared.
Al-Razi ran hospitals in Rayy and Baghdad and wrote medical works so careful that they were taught in Europe for centuries, including the first clinical account of the difference between smallpox and measles. As a philosopher he was a startling rationalist, holding that reason is given to every person and needs no prophet to complete it, that the soul can be healed by the same patient method as the body, and that no authority should be believed against the evidence. Even thinkers who detested his conclusions could not ignore the rigor with which he reached them.
Places
Ideas
Words
“Reason is the final authority; it should govern, and never be governed.”
Works
Life & Moments
Born in Rayy
Born in the Persian city of Rayy, where he would later direct its hospital.
Director of the Baghdad Hospital
Led one of the great hospitals of the age and wrote the first clinical account distinguishing smallpox from measles.
Reason Without a Prophet
Argued that reason is given to every person and needs no prophet to complete it, scandalizing theologians with his medical and philosophical rationalism.
Death in Rayy
Died in Rayy after a career that made clinical observation the measure of truth.
Influence
Influenced by
- Galen
Al-Razi absorbed Galen's medicine completely and then wrote Doubts about Galen, insisting his own clinical observation could correct the master. It was an unusually direct challenge to inherited authority.
Influenced
- Ibn Sina
Ibn Sina built on al-Razi's clinical legacy in the Canon while rejecting his metaphysics of five eternal principles, faulting him for straying past what a physician could establish.
