This work bridges the gap in medical history between modern western and non-western medicines. It opens a new perspective in medical historiography in which 'modern medicine' becomes an integral part of the history of medicine in non-European countries.

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.