Bimaristan is a Persian word (بیمارستان bīmārestān) meaning hospital, with Bimar- from Middle Persian (Pahlavi) of vīmār or vemār, meaning "sick" plus -stan as location and place suffix. In the medieval Islamic world, the word "Bimaristan" was used to indicate a hospital in the modern sense, an establishment where the ill were welcomed and cared for by qualified staff. In this way, Muslim physicians were the first to make a distinction between a hospital and other different forms of healing temples, sleep temples, hospices, asylums, and leper-houses, all of which in ancient times were more concerned with isolating the sick and the mad from society "rather than to offer them any way to a true cure." The medieval Bimaristan hospitals are thus considered "the first hospitals" in the modern se