Book Review:

War Health

Gholamreza Azizi*
Machine translation Edited by Mandana Karimi

2026-8-27

*Gholamreza Azizi; Retired faculty member of the Institute of Documents,

■ Tarikh-e Shafahi Defa’e Moghaddas Revayat-e Dr Ali Mehrabi tavana; Behdasht-e Jang (Oral History of the Sacred Defense Narrated by Dr. Ali Mehrabi Tavana; War Health)

■ With the efforts of Dr. Mohammadreza Bagheri

■ Rewritten and edited by: Allahkaram Abbasi

■ Tehran: Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Sacred Defense Documents and Research Center; 432 pp.

■ First edition, 2024

This book is the result of twenty conversations between Dr. Mohammadreza Bagheri and Dr. Ali Mehrabi Tavana and has 6 chapters.

The first chapter contains information about the interviewee from birth to entering the Ministry of Health, which is the result of three interview sessions. The second chapter is called Hidden Evils in the Troubles of Kurdistan and is the result of four interviews.[1] The third chapter is the result of three interview sessions that describe the ups and downs of health in the final years of the imposed war. The fourth chapter depicts the relationship between medical brilliance and improving health during wars through three interview sessions. The fifth chapter is dedicated to environmental health, and the sixth chapter examines health and food poisoning.

Thus, as can be seen from the perspective of content, the book is a combination of the oral history of the Holy Defense, the history of military medicine, and pathology.

The main part of the book is the narration of the oral history of health during the imposed war; but in addition, the history of diseases in wars is also mentioned, and in this way, it has entered the history of military medicine. Also, a significant part of the book's text deals with medical and health explanations.

The book "Oral History of the Holy Defense Narrated by Dr. Ali Mehrabi Tavana; Health of War" is important from several perspectives, like other books published by the Holy Defense Documentation and Research Center with Frost "Oral History of the Holy Defense". First, the main subject of these works is the commanders of the Holy Defense era. Most of the interviews were conducted by people who were fully familiar with the subject, and therefore the interview process was carried out carefully and completely professionally.

Another feature of the center is the presence of unique and precious documents and records from the Holy Defense era. The access of the interviewer and the interviewee to the documents and records available in this center is useful for both elements of the interview. This allows the interviewer to "strengthen" his memory and remove the "dust of the passing of time, sitting on the memories" of the interviewer, and it also allows the interviewee to design his questions with more detail and precision, and it also helps him during the explanation and verification.

Another feature of the book is that it is in good condition in terms of layout, printing, and binding, and the publisher has not failed in this regard either. Apart from all the merits that can be listed in this book, while reading the book, some things came to mind and stood out that it seems that paying attention to them in the next edition of the book and also considering them in subsequent similar books may be useful and will add to the richness of this unique series of books.

Content: The first issue relates to the content of the book. As mentioned above, the interviews in this book were conducted by someone who, in addition to being fully familiar with the subject, was also completely familiar with and proficient in the topic of discussion, and therefore the interview process was conducted in a completely specialized manner; but in some cases, it seems that this "complete specialization" has become the book's Achilles heel; because readers of books on the oral history of the Holy Defense expect and desire to study the history of the Holy Defense. (Just as readers of books on the "Oral History of Science" also desire to read "History of Science").Thus, the specialized nature of the subject matter and the expertise of the interviewer and interviewee have caused the interviewee to move from the role of an eyewitness (the Holy Defense Days) and the interviewer (from the role of an inquiring historian) in relatively significant cases to appear in the roles of a doctor and health and disease consultant, or a professor and student, and to ask and answer questions about the cause of the spread of certain diseases, their symptoms, and methods of treatment (without time or place boundaries).

In fact, in this book, in addition to focusing on the health situation of the fronts during the Holy Defense Days, general and specialized topics of diseases and compliance with health matters are viewed from the perspective of medical and health sciences, epidemiology, and preventive medicine, and a kind of “mixture of historical narrative with medical topics” has emerged. For example:

“What does Scabies mean? What is its mechanism and how is this disease prevented?” (p. 219).

“. What is meningitis? What are its symptoms and what effect does it have on the human body?” (p. 231).

“What symptoms does the patient have?” (p. 234).

“Rodents are reservoirs of diseases such as plague, relapsing fever, leptospirosis, Lyme, leishmaniasis, pseudomonas, and salmonella. Explain what the symptoms of relapsing fever are?” (p. 331).

Moreover, such questions and answers are not the kind of questions and answers that are expected to be asked in oral history interviews of the Holy Defense.

Another example of highly specialized questions[2] by the interviewer:

“Despite vaccination, although meningococcal meningitis has decreased, the possible occurrence of some bacterial meningitis should not be ignored. My question is, what is the difference between bacterial meningitis and non-bacterial meningitis?” (p. 249). The answer to this question should also be of the same type:

"These are not clinically different, and their etiology is different. So, meningitis is either bacterial or viral-viral or bacterial. Bacterial meningitis is also of two types: meningococcal meningitis and non-meningococcal meningitis; for example, some bacteria such as E. coli, Haemophilus influenzae, and the same Spectocopneumonia that causes pneumococcus" (p. 249).

It is because of this medical-health approach that specialized medical terms and terms and explanations related to them (in the form of explanations) are abundant in the subtitles; for example: Leishmania and Schistosomiasis (p. 139, subtitle 1).

In addition to specialized topics, general medical and health information has also been included in the text. For example:

"To boil, should the lids of canned goods be opened or is it enough to boil them as is?" (p. 174). Or the interviewer’s explanation and question: “People who cannot drink milk due to lactose intolerance, what should these people do?” (p. 365).

Or the interviewee’s explanations regarding the significant health points for pilgrims in the Arba’in procession and also the mental health (for the missing) in this procession (pp. 282-283), which are outside the time frame of the Holy Defense period and its thematic focus.

Or addressing the discussion of air pollution in the city of Hamedan (pp. 361-363).

It is true that this information is useful and important for everyone; but it does not seem that health knowledge about the Arba’in procession or the use of lactose-free milk has a place in the topic of the oral history of the Holy Defense.

In one case, the question “Did any of your relatives die as martyrs” (on p. 30) was not answered.

Explanations. The explanations are often appropriate and precise, free from exaggeration, and the principles of referencing and citation are observed. If there were no appropriate and timely clarifications of the specialized terms used in the text of the questions and answers of the book, it would be difficult to read this work without the use of a medical dictionary. Despite the appropriate clarifications, there is also some evidence of deviations in the clarification. For example:

Evidence of the lack of uniformity in clarifications:

In the subtitle of page 28, only the translation of the verses is given, and in the subtitle of page 30, the translation of the verse is given along with the name of the sura and the verse number; “And from Allah is success and against whom there is reliance” on page 64, contrary to the usual practice, is not translated.

Some cases are also not clarified: the football team of Ekbatan and Alvand (p. 31); “Saleh who became the governor of Hamadan” (p. 33);

On page 41, eleven acquaintances from university days are mentioned, but only one is clarified (to the extent of referring to the field). Also, the names given on page 42. Extreme verbalization:

For example, finger to mouth, means sad (p. 17).

On the other hand, there are also cases of deficiencies in verbalization:

The drug gamma benzene is first mentioned on page 231, but is verbalized on page 347.

On page 339, the interviewer mentions that "Mr. Dr. Rajai can explain this well"; but apparently this conversation did not take place and the reason for it is not mentioned in the verbalization.[3]

Edit. The book (apart from the relatively large number of Persian translations of technical terms) is well-edited, and despite the fact that the authors have managed to provide such an ambiguous text (of course, I cannot comment on the correct spelling of the technical medical terms used in the book, and it is even difficult for me to read it), there are still a few errors in the work, which are:

This disease is transmitted by mosquitoes. (p. 142). Instead of: This disease is transmitted by mosquitoes. There are also two incomprehensible cases in the text, which may have been left out during rewriting and correction.

“Emerging and reemerging diseases” (p. 10 and p. 170),

“Typhoid and the process of preventing it on the fronts, a preventable disease” (p. 11 and p. 265).

The explanation of malaria states that this word is derived from Mal bad and Aira air (p. 91), while apparently this term is derived from mala aria from medieval Italian.

On pages 203, 311-312, 318-319 and 322-324 of the book, documents are used, in such a way that the interviewer read documents in the meeting without mentioning where they were kept.

In some cases, repetition of material was seen. For example:

The issue of attending the presence of Ayatollah Meshkini and launching the Garrison Health Magazine is mentioned on pages 81-82 and 290.Typhoid is discussed in detail on pages 115 to 125; but it is addressed again on page 223 during the question “Is typhoid included in the classification of diseases?” and it is discussed for the third time with the interviewer’s request “Please tell me about typhoid” on pages 265 to 268.

Three points are evident in the publication of documents and photographs in the text of the book. First; their selection and arrangement are appropriate to the work and their placement in the book is appropriate to the text and is instructive. Second; some of the photographs are not of appropriate printing quality (or have they not been published correctly?) and third; the source of the photographs is not specified.

The book does not have a final list of sources and references used in the explanation. However, the important people, names, and topics included in the interview are correctly and systematically presented in the form of a composite index.