The earliest writings about coffee were by a Persian doctor named Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya El Razi, also known as Rhazes or Razi. He lived from 850 to 922 A.D. and wrote over 200 books on medicine during his lifetime. Rhazes described coffee as 'dry and very good for the stomach.'
About 200 years later, around 1000 A.D., another Persian doctor and philosopher named Avicenna Bukhara expanded on the medicinal properties of coffee. He wrote that coffee "fortifies the members, cleans the skin, and dries up the humidities that are under it and gives an excellent smell to all the body."
While some of these early ideas about coffee's effects may not be scientifically supported today, thousands of studies since then have explored the health benefits of coffee.
