Discussions on smallpox and smallpox vaccination according to Şanizade - Yasemin Akçagüner (Columbia University, New York)
The story of how the popular medical practice of variolation in the Ottoman Empire, championed chiefly by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, became part of learned medicine in the early eighteenth century in England is well known. Lesser known is the story of how vaccination made its way (back) to the Ottoman Empire. Building on recent studies showing the multidirectional exchange and circulation of scientific and medical knowledge, this chapter presents the first synthetic account of the arrival of the vaccine in Istanbul in 1800, through the lens of the Ottoman physician and court historian Şanizade Ataullah Efendi (d. 1826). Şanizade narrated the history of the vaccine’s arrival and relayed the European scholarly debate on the merits of the vaccine to an Ottoman scholarly readership in his 1820 publication The Mettle of Physicians (Miʿyarü’l-Eṭıbbā.) Taking part in this debate, Şanizade argued for the adoption of this new prophylaxis, but only if it was to be administered by qualified physicians who had proven their mettle thorough extensive book learning as well as excellence in surgical practice. With the vaccine’s arrival in Istanbul at the turn of the century, immunization against smallpox became the issue through which Şanizade advocated for the further professionalization of medicine.
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