This book traces how medicine in modern Iran was both theoretically and institutionally transformed in the 19th and 20th centuries. It explores the process by which local physicians, in a non-colonial context, assimilated the emerging "modern medicine" and the institutional devices that accommodated this transition.

This volume provides surprising new insights into the interrelation of medical practice, public health and politics in 19th century Iran, esp. the assimilation of Western medicine into indigenous systems.

Offers new and cutting-edge research on the role of drugs in Iranian society and government. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This volume looks at hospitals in the post-medieval Indo-Iranian world from various perspectives. During the Safavid-Mughal periods hospitals were still tied to Avicennian medicine. However, in Qajar Iran and British India hospitals became important instruments for the spread of modern Western medicine. The papers in this volume present a significant panorama on the history of medicine and medical institutions in Iran and India during the early modern and the modern periods. The portrait that emerges is not homogeneous, but instead shows ambivalent and contrasting images. Hospitals can be seen as powerful symbols of the Muslim scientific civilization and then of modern medicine, nevertheless, they remained institutions relegated to the fringes of society – regarded with suspicion and usually reserved for the poor. Contributors include: Cristiana Bastos, Willem Floor, Claudia Preckel, Omid Rezai, Fabrizio Speziale, Hasan Tadjbakhsh, Anna Vanzan This book is copublished with the Institut Français de Recherche en Iran (IFRI) as no. 74 in the Bibliothéque Iranienne series. Le présent ouvrage propose un panorama significatif d’études portant sur l’histoire et le rôle des hôpitaux dans le monde irano-indien au cours de la première modernité et de l’époque moderne. Les contributions rassemblées dans ce volume étudient l’hôpital depuis plusieurs perspectives, examinant cet établissement tantôt comme une institution scientifique, tantôt en fonction de son utilité sociale. Ce qui émerge de ces travaux ne constitue pas un portrait homogène, mais plutôt une image ambivalente et contrastée de ces établissements. Les hôpitaux peuvent être vus comme des symboles puissants de la piété des souverains musulmans, ou de la civilisation scientifique musulmane, puis du triomphe de la science occidentale moderne. Cependant, pour une très longue période, l’hôpital demeure une institution reléguée à la marge de la société, regardée avec suspicion et en particulier réservée aux indigents. Ce livre est une coédition avec l’Institut Français de Recherche en Iran (IFRI) comme n◦ 74 dans la série Bibliothèque Iranienne

Not much has been written about the early beginnings of modern medicine in Iran. With this book, renowned scholar Willem Floor, who has written more than fifty books on Iran's history and culture, corrects this lacuna. He details the development of the education of modern physicians starting in the 1850s. And highlights the important and influential role of American physicians in helping shape the culture of Iranian hospital care, including making it acceptable to Iranian patients. American missionary hospitals played a crucial role through the founding of the first medical school in 1885 in Urumiyeh. There were also two other medical training programs at American hospitals in Hamadan and Tehran. By 1930, most Iranian physicians trained in Western medicine had been educated either at the American University of Beirut, medical schools attached to American missionary hospitals, or in Europe. In 1915, American physicians also began the first school to train nurses. Later, in 1936, the government of Iran asked American missionary nurses to direct and run the five government schools for nurses. American and British physicians were the first to establish a rigorous ob-gyn program with pre- and post-natal care, including baby clinics to combat the high child mortality rate in Iran. This model was later adopted by all Iranian hospitals. American physicians also introduced the X-ray machine, the hospital laboratory, and other techniques to enhance medical diagnosis and treatment. All these were established through an environment of cooperation, collegiality, and professional cooperation with their Iranian colleagues through seminars, and the creation of medical societies in Mashhad and Tehran. The final chapter tells the history of leprosy in Iran, and the establishment and functioning of the first leprosarium in Mashhad by American missionary physicians in collaboration with the Imam Reza Shrine Foundation. This book will reward those interested in the development of modern medicine in Iran and the role of women in its health care system.

Until now, there have been no books and only a few articles available in English that deal with the actual practice of medicine in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Iran. Willem Floor's Public Health in Qajar Iran fills this lacuna, giving a broad and comprehensive survey of the state of public health, medical practice, and its practitioners in 1800-1925. Based on firsthand accounts of European travelers and doctors who practiced and observed medical treatment, the study provides an overview of the major diseases the population suffered and how these were treated. It also includes the available evidence logged by Iranian patients abroad and at home, as well as contemporary Persian texts that comment on public health and its practice in Iran. Floor shuns the analysis of classic Islamic medical textbooks, explaining that their medical advice was hardly ever administered and that the authors often had ideological (religious) agendas in writing these treatises. Instead, Floor investigates the commonly accepted theories of diseases, disorders, and their cures, including Islamic Galenic medicine and pre-Islamic theurgic folk medicine based on traditional herb lore and trial-and-error. The book concludes with the impact of Western medicine on the traditional medical institutions and public health in Qajar Iran. This exhaustive inquiry will enthrall scholars of Iran and medicine alike.