The article examines the activities of Rolla Hoffman, a missionary doctor working in Iran between 1915 and 1957 presented in the broader context of social and political changes in Iran. Proving the value of personal records – the mission reports and autobiographical narratives – for the study of the history of the Presbyterian medical mission on the one hand and the development of medicine in Iran on the other, the article focuses on selected images, depictions, and representations of Iran in Hoffman’s writings, which can be analysed in the frame of three categories: 1) autobiographical – the self-representation of a foreign doctor in Iran and the autobiographical testimony of the medical missionary and experiencing and witnessing the state medical regulation from the late Qajar period till the Pahlavi era and the reception of medical advances among Iranians; 2) relational – taking into account the doctor-patient relationships in Iran; 3) institutional – corresponding to the institutionalization of Iranian healthcare system and the institutional transformation of the mission hospitals situated in various cities in Iran.