The state of public health in the Qajar era from the perspective of foreign tourists (1227-1304)

Social history is one of the sciences that examines the changes in people's lives in different historical periods and challenges them. The issue of people's health and, in general, the changes that occurred in medicine during the Qajar period are among the issues that are important in the social history of this period. With the arrival of foreign tourists to Iran, some of whom were also doctors, health took on a different definition and the people of Iran faced new aspects of medicine, treatment and medicines that were different from their native medicine. During the Qajar period, due to political and social conflicts and problems, public health was not in a good condition. For this reason, the Qajar statesmen (since the chancellery of Amir Kabir) took interesting measures to improve public health. As they sought to use a new structure and model to restore the health status of the society. The arrival of modern ideas from Europe was the main focus of these changes. The Qajar government's dealings with the western civilization brought about a kind of political-social disillusionment, the main result of which was to follow the example of European medical institutions and use macro strategies. For this purpose, the main question of the current research is, what measures and policies did the Qajar government use to improve the public health of the people? This article is done with the method of historical description and analysis and has investigated the claim that the Qajar government used three major strategies to improve the health status of the people, including improving the level of general and specialized knowledge, legislation and establishing medical institutions. Achieving this fact that the Qajar government, through macro strategies, was able to implement measures such as pest control and quarantine at the country level, is one of the achievements of this research. This article can be a good example and achievement for other researches in this field in various aspects of health, including health in different places, types of diseases, causes of diseases and treatment style of doctors.