Health and Medical Regulations in Iranian Law: Pre-Islamic and Contemporary Era

• Main Authors: Mina Hosseini, Shadi Ganji
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Shiraz University of Medical Sciences 2021-05-01
• Series: Journal of Research on History of Medicine
• Subjects: iran; health; regulation; pre-islamic; medicine; abortion; euthanasia
• Online Access: https://rhm.sums.ac.ir/article_47557_9efe47636e92faf29302c9ba22572983.pdf

The present study aims at finding the origins of health and medical regulations in ancient Iran by reviewing some current regulations regarding these topics. The central question of this study is whether there is a significant difference between the current health law and medical regulations with pre-Islamic health and medical rules? Since the medical profession deals with the individuals’ body, mind, and spirit, and as healthcare is among the primary principles of Zoroastrianism, several practices of medical doctors of ancient Iran have been mentioned in Avesta and other Zoroastrian texts.Zoroaster emphasized the purity and sanity and exerted significant efforts to ratify rules and regulations in the medical field for the good of the patient. Vendidad contains different topics concerning the health issues; the Avestan text deals with the principles of medicine, medical system, patients’ rights, physicians’ competency, the relation between crime and illness, abortion, and medical ethics as well as the punishments for medical errors. Another ancient book, “Denkard” – belonging to the same era – has also addressed the critical issues found in health laws. This article will review health and medical-related regulations regarding some challenging topics (such as the importance of health legislation, physicians’ duties, abortion and euthanasia) in the pre-Islamic period, using an interdisciplinary and descriptive-analytical methods, and compare them with those in the contemporary era.This study shows that some standards and challenges have remained untouched from the pre-Islamic to the contemporary era.