Medical Transition under the Constitution

Abstract

The military modernization that ushered in the introduction of modern science in Qâjâr Iran played a key role in the emergence of a modern intelligentsia. In the second half of the nineteenth century, as the relationship with the West grew, this modern intelligentsia, recruited from the nobility and the emerging middle class, became the driving force behind the idea of progress (andisheh-ye taraqqi) that, according to Fereydoun Adamiyat, constituted the intellectual foundation of the constitutional movement.² According to this intelligentsia, the introduction and adoption of Western ideas, science, technology, and institutions would prevent Iran from stagnating. This development attained its concrete expression in the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 with the catchphrase “science and progress” (‘elm va taraqqi).³ It is within the context of the constitutional movement and its “ideology” of modernity that a new step was taken forward in the medical transition. This chapter will examine the new institutional and organizational devices and strategies that laid the foundations of biomedicine in Iran, in a context where humoral medicine was still present, if not prevailing, in practice.