Medicine and Public Health in Modern Iran: Historical and Sociological Perspectives

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ORCID

Amir A. Afkhami http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3211-7620

Notes

1 Afkhami, “Compromised Constitutions.”

2 Forouzanfar et al., “Evaluating Causes of Death.”

3 Regional Health System (WHO), Health System Profile, 5–9.

4 Minimally invasive surgery, a term coined by Dr. Parviz Kambin, is commonplace in today’s medical circles, yet in the past spinal surgery was often difficult, and even if successful required long recovery times. Innovations by Iranian surgeons such as Dr. Kambin have resulted in the creation of new tools and techniques that have greatly reduced the dangers of invasive interventions. See Kambin, “Diagnostic and Therapeutic Spinal Arthroscopy.”

5 Afkhami, A Modern Contagion, 30–33.

6 Ibid., 147.

7 Gallagher, “Medicine and Modernity.”

8 Abbas Amanat characterizes modern Iranian historiography as failing to “provide any meaningful interpretation of the past” due to the moral and ideological distortions of the historical realities. Amanat, “The Study of History,” 5; Afkhami, A Modern Contagion, 2–3. A large sampling of this largely uncritical commemorative culture in Iran’s medical historiography can be found in Azizi, A Collection of Essays.

9 Adamiyat and Ricks, “Problems in Iranian Historiography,” 142–7. Abbas Amanat has pointed out that Adamiyat “is not free from some of the biases and misinterpretations of which he accuses others.” See Amanat, “The Study of History,” 10.

10 Browne, Arabian Medicine; Browne, A Year amongst the Persians; Elgood, Safavid Surgery; Elgood, Safavid Medical Practice; Elgood, A Medical History.

11 Nadjmabadi, “Duktur Khalil Khan”; Nadjmabadi, “Les relations médicale”; Naficy, La médecine en Perse. Most of the articles on Iran’s history of medicine and public health published by the Archives of Iranian Medicine between 1998 and 2014 were biographical in nature. See Azizi, A Collection of Essays.

12 Good, “The Heart of What’s the Matter”; Bash and Bash-Liechti, Developing Psychiatry.

13 Afkhami, A Modern Contagion; Behrouzan, Prozak Diaries; Christensen, Drugs, Deviancy and Democracy; Ebrahimnejad, Medicine, Public Health; Ebrahimnejad, Medicine in Iran; Floor, Public Health; Homayounpour, Doing Psychoanalysis; Kashani-Sabet, Conceiving Citizens; Matthee, The Pursuit of Pleasure; Schayegh, Who Is Knowledgeable.