History of Death and Disease in the Islamicate World

 

Abstract: A Living Laboratory: Making Medicine Global in the Late Ottoman Empire

 

In the late Ottoman Empire, ideas and practices about medicine, disease, and public health were developed, translated, and circulated among various actors whose motivations as well as competing interests were shaped within a globalizing scientific world. Ottoman physicians were active participants in Europe's burgeoning global medical networks through imperial-sponsored education and their interaction (as well as encounter) with European physicians within shared medical circles in the Ottoman realm. Attitudes regarding the function and implications of scientific knowledge production reflected political and cultural expectations regarding science and medicine. Hence, the Ottomans' incentive to join the ranks of the medical and scientific experts was more than just a means of “westernization” in order to compete with their European counterparts. Rather, the making of scientific and medical knowledge was a political and moral process that incorporated and shaped the political interests of the Ottoman ruling elite. In a similar spirit, European scientists continued to take part in the Ottoman medical world as instructors, inspectors, and policy makers. The work of science and medicine in the Ottoman realm provided ample ground for European scientists to differentiate their work from their European counterparts by utilizing a vast geography and life on it like “a living laboratory.” Between the search for practical solutions for prevailing fundamental problems such as contagious disease and attempts to make an evident mark within Western scientific competition, Ottoman medical circles exhibited a rather hybrid character in which all the actors contributed distinctive political and social agendas and desires to the making of scientific and medical practices in the late Ottoman period.

 

 

 

Seçil Yılmaz is an Assistant Professor of History and Core Faculty in the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Yılmaz specializes in the social and political history of the Ottoman Empire and modern Middle East with a focus on medicine, science, and sexuality. Her research concentrates on the social and political implications of venereal disease in the late Ottoman Empire by tracing the questions of colonialism, modern governance, biopolitics, and sexuality. Her other projects include research on the relationship between religion, history of emotions, and contagious diseases in the late Ottoman Empire as well as history of reproductive health technologies and humanitarianism in the modern Middle East. She is currently working on a book project tentatively titled Biopolitical Empire: Syphilis, Medicine, and Sex in the Late Ottoman World.  Yilmaz is the recipient of the Middle East Studies Association’s Malcom H. Kerr Best Dissertation Award. Her publications have appeared in the journals including Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies and in edited collections such as The Routledge Companion to Sexuality and Colonialism. She is the co-curator of the podcast series on Women, Gender, and Sex in the Ottoman World at Ottoman History Podcast.