JOURNAL OF RESEARCH ON HISTORY OF MEDICINE
Year:2018 | Volume:7 | Issue:4 |Papers Count:6

Malaria is a dangerous disease that was considered one of the leading causes of mortality in Iran up to Pahlavi II period. The small and weak population of Iran could not enjoy favorable economic conditions because of the disease. Therefore, overcoming this social and economic weakness became a strong motivation for combatting malaria. These efforts became more concentrated by founding Planning Organization in 1948. The Organization for Combatting Malaria (the main executor of the plan) managed to achieve impressive results up to the end of the third construction project in 1967. They curbed malaria in some parts of the country and continued efforts despite the enormous obstacles in the path. Keeping malaria in check made improvement in public health to some extent and raised people’ s hope that other health problems might be resolved. Mortality rate dropped and work force achieved recovery. This paper investigated combatting malaria from 1948 to 1967 and addressed its obstacles, approaches and achievements. Accordingly, research questions were answered through content analysis and deductive reasoning. The major sources used were reports released by the state, particularly the reports of Planning Organization and Ministry of Health, as well as old magazines.

The study of the impact of Beit Al-Hakma on the translation movement, is one of the most recent challenges faced by scholars in the history of the golden age of Islam. This challenge was first introduced in Iran with the translation of Dmitry Gutas’ s book, “ Greek Thought, Arabic Culture” , which published in 1998. The book denied the existence of a scientific center in the golden era of Islamic civilization, in which it deliberately directed the selection and translation of texts. He denies the existence of Bait al-Hikmah with the liberal democracy in American culture and the assumptions in which all the influential developments are influenced by the masses of people and the government does not play an important role. Gutas express some financial reasons and hardware states, which stimulate to organize a movement in the Islamic lands and led to the translation of texts. But there are many documents that discuss the extraterrestrial tendencies of Gutas’ s historiography, and this article illustrate these reasons for rejecting Gutas’ s theory.

Persian Medicine (PM) references contain valuable information which can be useful for health preservation, diagnosis and treatment of diseases and can promote health in society. Introducing this school of medicine to the medical community requires a set of valid English equivalents to communicate PM’ s fundamental concepts. This study gathers the most frequent words in PM in three forms: Persian name, English or Latin name and Persian name with English spelling, and finally a uniform English and Persian name is suggested for every word. “ Iranian Scientometric Information Database – ISID” were used to find those researchers in PM and Persian pharmacy who have a PhD degree and an H-Index equal or more than 4. Then all of their review articles about PM indexed in Scopus were analysed to pinpoint the frequent words of basic principles in PM. An expert panel of five including PM and Persian pharmacy specialists, and an English language specialist decided about the best word as the final suggestion for each concept. There were 17 researches with 478 articles 77 of which were review articles. Totally 62 words were taken out of these articles. In addition, the experts decided to add 18 more words to the list. This study provides a fairly exhaustive list of words of basic principles in PM. Using these words in future studies can contribute to the uniformity of the key vocabulary in PM articles.

Myths are truth-based narratives that exist in most nations with a lot of similarities and, of course, with minor differences. These stories are studied for recognition of the opinions, beliefs and the culture of a horde. Since the late nineteenth century, mythology has been recognized as one of the branches of science. In many tribes such as ancient Iran, the belief of vegetation of human and animals can be seen. The mythology of creation is based on the contrast between the noble Ahuraei and the devilish evil forces. At first, Ahuramazda creates all the universes in health and perfection; sky, water, earth, plant, animal and human. Ahriman attacks these creatures and causes illness and death. Ahouramazda, rose up to contradict and the plant grew up from mythical cattle organs and Mashya and Mashyaneh also grew up from Kiomars sperm. These materials can be traced and examined from three perspectives of first-hand sources such as Bun-Dahiš n, Vazidagiha-i-Zaddisparam, etc., mythological sources and later research. According to these sources, and with a look at the myths of creation in ancient Persia, the creation of animals and humans from the vegetation can be deduced. In ancient Persia, like many other tribes, there existed a belief of creation of humans and animals from plants.

The first attempts on the part of physicians and pharmacists to improve medications (to eliminate their side effects) goes back to the ancient Greece and the works of Hippocrates of Kos and Galen of Pergamon, and medication enhancement constituted a pivotal subject in the Islamic pharmacology, where the independent treaties compiled in this regard point to an independent scholarship tradition. Physicians and pharmacists were well aware of the fact that any medication used in the treatment process would involve its own side effects, which were to be accounted for. Of the first treaties authored on the subject is Hubaish ibn al-Hasan al-Aʻ sam’ s Improvement of Medicines written in 3rd century AH. Stressing the high value of the knowledge of medicines and their respective side effects, he therein emphasizes their appropriate production and use as well as removing their side effects. After a short introduction to the laxative medicines, he gives a brief discussion on their nature, effects and proper doze; he goes on to catalog different types of each medication before suggesting solutions for eliminating their side effects. The treatise became a reliable reference material for later pharmacological and pharmaceutical books, so we find it among the oft-cited sources by Zakariyya al-Razi, al-Biruni, and Ibn al-Baytar.