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.

Hormoz Ebrahimnejad, Ph.D. (1995) in History, University of Sorbonne Paris III, is Research Fellow at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, London. He has published various articles in the history of medicine in Iran and a book on power and succession in Iran in the eighteenth and nineteenth century (L'Harmattan, 1999).