Aleppo Buttons and Sulphur Injections: The Politics of Science and Citation in Mandatory Palestine and Transjordan

Abstract

Summary This article explores the experiences of two doctors, Jamil Tutunji and Tawfiq Canaan, in their efforts to interact with, contribute to and debate with international colleagues in the medical journals of the 1920s–40s. Respectively from Transjordan and Palestine, both at the time ruled by British colonial administrations under League of Nations Mandates, these men’s work seems to have been ignored or sidelined in favour of that by European or European-Jewish scholars working on similar topics. The resulting trajectories they followed, however, differed significantly, highlighting the shifting opportunities available to scientists of Arab origin in the colonial world of academic publishing, collaboration and citation. Canaan and Tutunji’s engagement with medical research highlights the precarity of their positions as doctors committed to a model of medicine the operation of which was policed by professionals and institutions in the colonial metropole.