The Health System on the Threshold of Modernization: An Analysis of Medical Discourse in the Journals Nameh-ye Pezeshkan and Shahrir (1946–1951)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of History and Iranology, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran.

2 Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Talegani Hospital, Laboratory Section, Kermanshah, Iran.

10.22091/ethc.2026.14804.1072

Abstract

Objective: This study examines the representation of health and disease in the medical journals Nameh-ye Pezeshkan and Shahrir during 1325–1330 SH (1946–1951), with particular attention to their relationship to discourses of power, social order, and health policy in post–World War II Iran.
Materials and Methods: Using a historical-critical discourse analysis approach, the study draws on Foucauldian concepts of biopolitics and the knowledge/power relationship. All issues of the two journals published during the study period were examined through thematic coding, analysis of linguistic structures, and historical-social interpretation.
Results: The findings indicate that health was represented not merely as a biological phenomenon but also as an instrument for redefining social order. Shahrir predominantly articulated an elite-oriented discourse emphasizing bodily discipline, public health education, and the authority of modern medicine. In contrast, Nameh-ye Pezeshkan adopted a more critical perspective, portraying diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and addiction as manifestations or metaphors of poverty, social inequality, and governmental inefficiency, while presenting the physician as a critical intellectual. Discussions of sexual health and child marriage further demonstrate the expanding role of medicine into broader spheres of social intervention.
Conclusion: Despite differences in their discursive orientations and target audiences, both journals emphasized the modernization of the health system and the development of health policy. The medical press of the period transformed the body into a site of competition between an elite-organizational and a critical-social form of power, thereby contributing to the formation of biopolitical practices and the emergence of a modern medical-social identity in Iran.

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References

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