Palestinian doctors became a dynamic, vocal, influential, and fascinating professional community over the first half of the twentieth century, growing from roughly a dozen on the eve of World War I to 300 in 1948. This study examines the social history of this group during the late Ottoman and British Mandate periods, examining their social and geographic origins, their professional academic training outside Palestine, and their role and agency in the country's medical market. Yoni Furas and Liat Kozma examine doctors' interactions with the rural and urban society and their entangled relationship with the British colonial administration and Jewish doctors. This book also provides an in-depth description of how Palestinian doctors thought and wrote about themselves and their personal, professional, and collective ambitions, underlining the challenges they faced while attempting to unionize. Furas and Kozma tell Palestine's story through the acts and challenges of these doctors, writing them back into the local and regional history.

‘This book is essential for anyone interested in the history of the medical profession in Late Ottoman and Mandate Palestine and a model for scholarship on this subject elsewhere in the region. Almost encyclopaedic in comprehensiveness and detail, Palestinian Doctors represents a rare combination of painstaking archival research and theoretical sophistication.'

Jonathan Marc Gribetz - author of Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter

‘A must-read history of medicine, of professionalization and of Palestinians. Through lively stories and a treasure trove of data, this social history situates Palestinian doctors in their overlapping local, national and regional contexts. It adds a crucial new chapter to a growing literature on middle-class Palestinian life before 1948.'

Hilary Falb Kalisman - author of Teachers as State-builders: Educators and the Making of the Modern Middle East