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.

Dexter Filkins joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2011. He has written about Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, the uprisings in Yemen, the crises in Syria and Lebanon, the Prime Minister of Turkey, and a troubled Iraq War veteran who tracked down the surviving members of a family that his unit had opened fire on. 

Filkins worked at the Miami Herald and the Los Angeles Times, where he was the paper’s New Delhi bureau chief, before joining the New York Times, in 2000, reporting from New York, South Asia, and Iraq, where he was based from 2003 to 2006. 

In 2009, he won a Pulitzer Prize as part of a team of Times journalists covering Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 2006, he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, and, from 2007 to 2008, he was a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. 

He has received numerous prizes, including two George Polk Awards and three Overseas Press Club Awards. His book, “The Forever War,” won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and was named a best book of the year by the Times, the Washington Post, Time, and the Boston Globe.

Source: The New Yorker