The foundation of a professional group: physicians in the nineteenth century modernizing Ottoman Empire (1839-1908)

Abstract

This dissertation studies the foundation of the modern professional group of physicians in the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire between the Tanzimat period, during which the first School of Medicine was introduced, and the Second Constitutional Period, after which new medical institutions and political atmosphere were born. The aim of the research is to find out the process in which the modern state formation overlapped with the appearance of this specific profession by considering new ideas of progressivism and modernism. The research first describes the general atmosphere created by the new medical technologies and understanding of the nineteenth century. Then, the new system regulating medical activities is explained and the ways to deal with irregular practitioners is analyzed. After that, within this new system, the formation of a medical student is described by focusing on an ordinary life within the school with political and medical activities. The final focus is given to their civilian activities and the different reactions to them in the Ottoman provinces through the study of provincial physicians and the quarantine doctors. The appearance of the physician is analyzed through the consideration of the shift in the eyes of the state, the self-perception of the physicians, and the perception of the physicians by the common people by primarily the use of the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives in addition to the memoirs and biographies of the physicians. The study targets the introduction of everydayness of these professional elite in relation to the people, the state and the profession itself, and to look behind the legislations introduced under the progressivist and centralizing administrative mentality of the modern state.