Old patterns, new meaning: the 1845 hospital of Bezm-i Alem in Istanbul.

This paper discusses the history of an 1845 Ottoman hospital founded by Bezm-i Alem, mother of the reigning sultan Abdülmecit I (reigned 1839-1856), embedded in the medical and political contexts of the Middle East in the nineteenth century. The main focus of this paper is the Ottoman discourse of modernization, which identified progress with modernization and westernization and induced a belief in the positive character of progress, with a high degree of optimism regarding the success of the process. The Bezm-i Alem hospital illustrates the medical reality of the 19th century, reconstructed through Ottoman eyes rather than from the perspective of foreigners with their own agenda and biases. In many respects it continued previous medical traditions; other aspects reveal brand new developments in Ottoman medicine and hospital management. Ottoman medical reality was one of coexistence and rivalry: traditional conceptions of medicine and health were believed and practiced side-by-side with new western-like concepts and techniques.

Medical and professional ethics in sixteenth-century Istanbul: towards an understanding of the relationships between the Ottoman State and the medical guilds.

This paper contributes to the understanding of Ottoman medical guilds, their relationship with the government, and the role played by medical ethics in this framework. Decrees by the sultans (sing. ferman), issued in the Ottoman Imperial Council (Divan) in Istanbul during the sixteenth century, concern themselves also with medical and ethical issues. The sheer number of these decrees may give the erroneous impression that the quality of medicine in the Ottoman Empire was low. This paper argues, however, that many of the complaints brought before the Ottoman authorities were instigated by medical guilds' members against their colleagues and competitors, not by aggravated patients demanding compensation from negligent healers. The discourse of medical ethics was raised in these cases not for its own sake, rather it embodied efforts by medical guild members to defend their economic interests and their intellectual and social status in the brutal competition in the medical realm.