Abstract

The Arab medical tradition profoundly contributed to current health sciences. Muhammad ibn Zakariya Al-Razi (865-925 AD), also known as Rhazes, was one of the masters of the classical Arabic Medicine. This article aims to discuss the work of Al-Razi, who, apart from being a prominent physician, was also a chemist (alchemist) and philosopher, a polymath who fused the Hellenic medical tradition with the advances of the Golden Age of Arabic medicine, leaving a legacy that survived the Middle Ages in a knowledge that has reached today. He was the first one to write a pediatric text as an independent specialty in medicine. His discoveries in chemistry and pharmacy represent the apogee of Islamic alchemy. We believe that studying Al-Razi as well as other classical physicians should be an essential part of the Medical Humanities (especially, for the Philosophical Foundations of Medical Sciences) because it provides a fundamental historical knowledge, useful to understand the current advances in natural sciences and biomedicine. Therefore, Al-Razi’s legacy should be studied and disseminated among the new generations.