Social medicine, one of the major trends of global health in the first half of the twentieth century, seems to be out of place when one considers the Middle East. Major epidemics in the nineteenth century, plague and cholera in particular, induced strict control procedures on transportation but remained on the surface of Ottoman society. As evidenced by Sandy Sufian and Timothy Mitchell, in the most systematic health policies, macro-environmental changes were preferred to the socio-economic transformations promoted by partisans of social medicine. However, this was not for lack of interest for social medicine : Ceren Ilikan was able to show that the early Turkish Republican state harnessed anti-tuberculosis mobilizations dating back to the late Ottoman period, into enforcing its social project of shaping a modern, healthy Turkish citizenry. This paper aims at tracking and questioning social medicine approaches in the Arab Levant, from the late Ottoman period to the mandates, through the lens of anti-TB policies. The establishment of the mandate implied that improving health was an international obligation for the colonial powers. It attracted the attention of the League of Nations' Health Organisation, in whose midst partisans of social medicine were very active. Multiple plans for relief and healthcare development were formulated in the immediate aftermath of the war, to deal with greatly enhanced epidemiological problems in a hard-hit region. However, the mandatory were short of cash and largely subcontracted healthcare to voluntary religious institutions, and, in Palestine, to Zionist organizations. Did these institutions stick to their earlier approach, aimed at extending beneficence and providing healthcare mostly within sectarian bounds without engaging social structures ? Or was there room, in the new political system, for social medicine ?