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

This article examines the professional experiences of two Arab doctors, Jamil al-Tutunji from Transjordan and Tawfiq Canaan from Palestine, as they engaged with international medical research and publishing during the British Mandate period (1920s–1940s). Despite their Euro-American medical training and contributions to research on diseases such as leishmaniasis and syphilis, both faced marginalization by European and European-Jewish scientific communities, reflecting the racial and colonial biases embedded in the imperial medical establishment. Canaan’s epidemiological work challenged prevailing colonial narratives that blamed indigenous populations for disease spread, instead linking it to industrial and military developments, while Tutunji notably contested the lack of citation for his early treatment proposals in prominent journals like The Lancet. Their careers diverged after 1948, with Canaan focusing on Palestinian medical nationalism amid displacement, and Tutunji rising to prominent public health and diplomatic roles in independent Jordan, illustrating the complex intersections of colonialism, medicine, and nation-building in the Levant.