The medicinal use and commodification of leeches in the late Ottoman Empire

Abstract

This thesis examines more than three hundred trade related leech documents found among the nineteenth century Ottoman archives. These documents aggregate roughly between 1840 and 1870 and are filed in various important archival series, dealing with foreign affairs, internal affairs, correspondence among top governmental offices, imperial decrees, harem decrees and treasury accounts. This thesis is an effort to understand and give meaning to the significant stock of documents related to leeches, to their sudden increase and almost abrupt decrease between 1840s and 1870s and to the high importance that leeches were ascribed by the Ottoman government and foreign parties as reflected from the documents. In the first part the general history of medicinal leeches has been covered with a special emphasis on the nineteenth century. In the second part the history of medicinal leeches in the Ottoman Empire has been examined with a comparative approach and also with a special emphasis on the nineteenth century. In order to understand the medicinal utilization of leeches in the Ottoman Empire some primary medical sources, medical manuscripts, archival documents and nineteenth century periodicals have been used. The fourth part is an attempt to construct the life Artouse, of a French leech merchant living in Maraş during 1850s by integrating some memoirs, articles and documents which seemed to complement each other into a meaningful and consistent whole. In the last part, the nineteenth century archival material related to leech trade has been analyzed in order to understand the value of the leech as a commodity. As a conclusion this thesis attempts to answer the initial questions raised in the introduction part, by integrating the arguments concluded in the first four parts of the thesis with an effort to make a connection between medical, social and financial histories.