UC Berkeley

This dissertation maps the transformation of the medical profession and its relationship to evolving intercommunal dynamics within the Ottoman empire in the long nineteenth century. In it, I argue that medicine became a dynamic professional space in the nineteenth century in which Ottoman physicians of all confessional backgrounds could not only shape the future of medical practice and public health, but also wield increased power within Ottoman politics and society. In earlier centuries, medicine had been a venue for non-Muslims to achieve professional success and gain political capital, in particular via serving as palace physicians. With institutional changes, starting with the founding of the Imperial School of Medicine in Istanbul in 1827, that sought to increase the number of Muslim physicians earning medical degrees and working for the military and other state institutions, came new opportunities for Muslim and non-Muslim subjects to be educated together. I argue that this also created new opportunities for Muslim and non-Muslim physicians to collaborate in professional spaces, as well as enact change within their respective Greek, Armenian, Jewish, and Muslim communities. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of Ottoman medical professionalization – education, regulation, medical societies, and hospitals – and the communal and intercommunal dynamics at play in each.I argue that what it means to be an Ottoman doctor fundamentally changed in the nineteenth century, with the emergence of a new type of middle class Ottoman medical professional and the elevation in status of Ottoman doctors as a professional group. I integrate the transformation of Ottoman medicine into existing understandings of the Tanzimat, or Reorganization, period of Ottoman history, and argue that the trajectory of medical professionals in this period speaks to the evolving relationship that different communities and had with the Ottoman state as well as the changing dynamics between and within different communities. In viewing each aspect of Ottoman medical professionalization through the lens of communal and intercommunal dynamics, I seek to demonstrate how medicine proved a particularly apt field for non-Muslim doctors to maintain relevance within Ottoman political power structures at a time when revolts threw suspicion upon the state loyalty of these groups. However, I also argue that these doctors also managed to nurture communal ties and even express a certain type of communal pride, as with Ottoman Greek physicians’ philhellenic activities in particular, without sacrificing their status within Ottoman state institutions. Likewise, I also point to how Muslim physicians collaborated with their non-Muslim peers while also striving for a new type of Ottoman medicine which would rely more on the use of the Ottoman Turkish language and an evolving sense of patriotism in which medical practice was also a civic duty. This dissertation aims to contribute a more complex understanding of intercommunal dynamics in the nineteenth century and how Ottoman medical professionalization became a particularly potent space for communal action and intercommunal collaboration and conflict. It also hopes to revise preexisting histories of medicine in the Ottoman empire and beyond by highlighting the social dynamics of the profession and its impact on the practice of medicine.