A Different View of the Middle East (original) (raw)

Cross-Cultural Medicine in the Middle East at the Start of the 21st Century: Where East and West Meet

TSW Holistic Health & Medicine, 2000

The "global village" has resulted in the need to tackle cross-cultural issues in the medical school curriculum. The southern region of Israel (the Negev) provides a unique opportunity to study the interaction between medicine and culture. The Negev population is a multicultural society, with Bedouin Arabs comprising almost a fifth of its population. This imposes tremendous challenges to the medical establishment in the region and serves as a "cross-cultural laboratory" for educating medical students in global health issues. Both the traditional Israeli medical school track, as well as the newly established Medical School for International Medicine, incorporate studies of cross-cultural issues in various forms and to different degrees. Studies suggest that the exposure of students to international medical experiences increases their cross-cultural sensitivity and knowledge. We feel that in a region characterized by such ethnic diversity, all medical schools should adopt cross-cultural studies as an integral part of their curriculum.

Introduction: Medical Mobilities in the Modern Middle East and North Africa

Bulletin of the History of Medicine

This themed section contributes to efforts to conceptualize medical mobility. It does so by observing medical histories within the Middle East while following concrete movements. This focus on what moves and how, rather than on largely static and fixed units of analysis on where to, is central to the studies in this issue. The location of the Middle East, as a crossroad for imperial mobilities-is ideal for exploring transnational medical movements. Bringing together historians of the Middle East and North Africa, the articles explore intersections among medicine, health, and the body and histories of cross-regional mobility. This section spans the period from the early twentieth century to the 1970s. The articles are based on primary sources in Greek, Turkish, English, French, Spanish, and Arabic, located in the national archives of the UK, Israel, and Cyprus; in French diplomatic and military archives; and in the Overseas Nursing Association's publications.

How Islam changed medicine

BMJ, 2005

Responsible participation can make these initiatives work. Academics should submit their relevant manuscripts to databases such as Relief Web. Moreover, we urge journals to submit the full text of all of their public health related articles to Relief Web, a policy which BioMed Central, an open access publisher, has pioneered, and has recently been joined by PLoS Medicine. The mass media could report more accurately on humanitarian situations. And funding agencies should look more favourably on evaluations of relief efforts and of the impact of their own responses. We do not seek to place blame upon the many agencies and NGOs that provide selfless and important care to the most vulnerable people in humanitarian crises. We understand that our proposal may be viewed as a challenge, and we recognise that it is impossible to make all reports available, particularly those about relief in political disasters. In exceptional circumstances, publishing a report that seemed to be censorious of a host country could place an organisation's staff or the population in danger or risk the expulsion of the agency. Indeed the head of the Sudan mission of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was arrested in May 2005 and detained for releasing a report reporting sexual violence observed at MSF clinics. 10 We share a vision that everyone involved in making decisions about relief will be able to use evidence and knowledge generated by agencies and others. Archived evidence is a potent form of witness and testament for historical accountability and memory, and to achieve such an archive we have to collaborate. It is only a matter of time before another disaster will find us in disarray. Edward J Mills fellow

ARAB-ISLAMIC MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS

ABSTRACT This paper aims to investigate and evaluate the medical institutions in the Islamic world during the middle ages. It will focus on the following topics: 1- The importance of Bimaristans(Hospitals) in the middle ages as it was the backbone of the process of medical treatment . 2- The continuous connection between Bimaristans and medical education. 3- Early influence on Europe . However, the paper is going to evaluate the Arabic efforts towards the medical care in the Islamic world .

Promoting Arab and Israeli cooperation: peacebuilding through health initiatives

The Lancet, 2005

This article describes a positive experience in building Arab and Israeli cooperation through health initiatives. Over the past 10 years Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian health professionals have worked together through the Canada International Scientific Exchange Program (CISEPO). In the initial project, nearly 17 000 Arab and Israeli newborn babies were tested for early detection of hearing loss, an important health issue for the region. The network has grown to address additional needs, including mother-child health, nutrition, infectious diseases, and youth health. Our guiding model emphasises two goals: project-specific outcomes in health improvement, and broader effects on cross-border cooperation. Lessons learned from this experience and the model provide direction for ways that health professionals can contribute to peacebuilding.

Reuven Gafni Lone Jewish Medical Personnel in Arab Towns A Conditional Presence Israel Studies

Israel Studies (UIP), 2021

The article presents in a preliminary manner, a historical and geographical phenomenon that has yet to be dealt with extensively: The settlement and activities of Jewish medical personnel working alone in Arab towns and villages from the beginning of the Mandate period till the outbreak of the Arab Revolt: , the motives which led Jewish doctors to settle in Arab cities; the characteristics of their activities, medical and cultural; the relations they formed with the local Arab populace; and the circumstances which eventually led to the end of their activities in these cities. A sensitive reading of related sources may offer a deeper insight into the phenomenon as it was perceived within the bi-national context – mainly on the Jewish side, but on the Arab side as well. The article is based on current research dealing with Jews in Arab cities during the Mandate period, with a primary focus on several Jewish physicians who worked within an Arab milieu before the the Arab Revolt.

Making Healthy Minds and Bodies in Syria and Lebanon, 1899 - 1961

2014

Historiography of Mental Health Treatment in the Modern Middle East Anglophone and Francophone scholars who have worked on healing in the twentieth century Middle East have largely studied either psychiatry or spirit-based healing, but usually not both, or even their interaction in the plural medical landscape. The development of psychiatric medicine in the Middle East has largely been a story told through French, British, or American affairs in developing asylums and schools, or through local efforts to combat foreign encroachment, as with Mehmet ʿAli's schools and army in Egypt. 28 While historians focus largely on the psychiatric institutions, jinn (spirits) and magic in the Middle East are more popular topics for anthropologists with some brief forays into the nebulous area between jinnpossession and psychiatric notions of mental illness. 29 Anthropologist Celia Rothenberg, for example, notes that the director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP, opened in 1990) Palestinian psychiatrist Eyad Sarraj considers political context important to society as a whole. There had...always been a wide gap between educated officials and the population at large. But as the educated officials came increasingly from Westernized schools, the gap widened...As the nineteenth-century transformation brought certain advantages to Egyptian and Ottoman society, it also brought economic hardship, social disruption, and political exploitation." See also Ussama Makdisi, "Ottoman Orientalism," American Historical Review 107 (3) (2002), 768-796, Selim Deringil, "'They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery': the Late Ottoman Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate,"