A workshop organised by the Ottoman History Working Group and the History of Science and Medicine Working Group
Over the past decade, scholars have defined Ottoman new medicine in competing ways: as the integration of chemical methods into Ottoman medicine from the 16th century, a shift from Galenic-Avicennan humoralism to Paracelsian ideas, or the broad adoption of new substances and practices, including those from the New World. Widely attested in Ottoman medical manuscripts from the 17th to 19th centuries, the term remains both expansive and elusive. This workshop brings together experts who will discuss the changing meaning of the term across the early modern period and into the nineteenth century across one morning and two afternoon sessions. In the morning, we will begin with an introductory lecture by Dr Akif Yerlioğlu (Boğaziçi University) and contributions by Prof. Nükhet Varlık (Rutgers University), Dr Yasemin Akçagüner (EUI Max Weber Fellow), and Tunahan Durmaz (EUI HEC researcher). In the afternoon, we will have two roundtable sessions. The first session will examine which practices and substances were deemed new in the Ottoman medical marketplace from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The second session will ponder the ontological question: how does the meaning of novelty within Ottoman medicine change over time?
Audience members are encouraged to join the discussion by reading a selection of journal articles in advance. Please contact the organisers to receive the readings.
Image featuring a botanical illustration of cinchona officinalis, in the public domain and found on Wikimedia Commons, and image featuring a 17th-century drawing of alembics by the Ottoman physician Ömer Şifai, reproduced in the article Convergences in and around Bursa: Sufism, Alchemy, Iatrochemistry in Turkey, 1500–1750 by Feza Günergun. Images were collaged using ChatGPT.
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