This paper explores the non-elite understanding of public health and investigates popular ideas about what a modern citizen should/can do to stay healthy. Historians of modern Iran have studied the role of public health in the Iranian process of top-down modernization, but these studies mostly inform us of the elite’s view of the society. Thus, we do not know much about the everyday experience of the people who were pressured to change their lifestyle to fit in the new and modernized Iran. To fill the gap, this paper focuses on the medical knowledge that was accessible for a broader non-elite audience. It examines the role of medical knowledge in everyday life of the Iranian modern middle class and explores people’s understanding of medical specialists as a professional group. The previous literature emphasizes that the Iranian modern middle class professionals used their expert knowledge to enhance their social position in the society. This paper complements previous research by suggesting that the modern middle class’s efforts to improve their social status was not completely successful in the case of medical professionals. Although the reference to specialist knowledge is visible throughout mid-20th century magazines, visiting specialists was often not the people’s first course of action, especially for mental issues. Instead, middle class individuals were encouraged to correct and heal themselves on their own, by pursuing science, philosophy, or self-edification, or by reading and communicating with popular magazines to enhance their knowledge. Relying on several issues of Ettela’at weekly and Ettelaat Monthly published between 1941-1951, this paper further argues that the medical knowledge published in these magazines offered an alternative to seeking professional help for the middle class, which is visible in the readers’ communication with the magazines. The offered alternatives ranged from theoretical insights about certain illnesses to providing practical and behavioral solutions for preventing or treating abnormalities. This paper discusses the frequent mocking of physicians and medical specialists in such popular magazines, and puts forwards a hypothesis to partially explain it. I suggest that the popularization of medical knowledge, in turn, could have subverted the social status of medical professionals, which may explain the prevalence of jokes, cartoons, and satire targeted at medical professionals. Thus, by turning the focus away from books written by professionals towards popular magazines, this paper sheds light on an aspect of the history of medicalization and professionalization in Iran deserving of more study.