Eighteenth-Century European Medical Encounters with The Ottoman Levant

Year 2021, Issue: 73, 77 - 101, 15.02.2021

Mohammad Sakhnini

https://doi.org/10.26650/iutd.746053

Abstract

This essay is about some eighteenth-century cross-cultural encounters between Europeans and Ottomans. It mainly shows how eighteenth-century British and European travels and travel writings about the Ottoman Levant revealed the notion of plurality in the field of Enlightenment medicine. In reporting their medical encounters with Ottoman culture, British and European travellers showed their fascination with Levantine medical practices and medicines. Similarly, local cultures in the Ottoman Levant appreciated European medical knowledge. In these encounters, as this essay argues, a circulation of knowledge between East and West re-settles and complicates narratives of European triumphalism, heroism and colonialism usually attached to eighteenth-century European scientific travels and writing travels about non-Europeans.

Keywords

Cross-cultural encounter, Medicine, Enlightenment, Travel, Balsam of Mecca, Turkish bath, Ottoman Levant

On Sekizinci Yüzyılda Avrupalıların Osmanlı Doğu Akdeniz’indeki Tıp Tecrübeleri

Abstract

Bu makale Avrupalılar ve Osmanlılar arasındaki bazı kültürlerarası karşılaşmaları ele alarak on sekizinci yüzyıl İngilizlerin ve Avrupalıların Osmanlı Doğu Akdeniz’ine yaptığı seyahatlerin ve yazdıkları seyahatnamelerin Aydınlanma tıbbı alanında çoğulluğu nasıl ortaya koyduğunu göstermektedir. Osmanlı tıbbıyla ilgili tecrübelerini aktaran İngiliz ve Avrupalı seyyahlar Doğu Akdeniz tıp uygulamaları ve ilaçlarına dair meraklarını aktarmışlardır. Aynı şekilde söz konusu bölgedeki yerel kültürler de Avrupa tıp bilgisi takdir etmişlerdir. Makalenin öne sürdüğü üzere bu süreçte Doğu ve Batı arasındaki bilgi dolaşımı, genellikle Avrupalı olmayanlar üzerine on sekizinci yüzyıl Avrupa bilimsel yazıları ve seyahatnamelerinde görülen Avrupa’nın üstünlüğü, hamaseti ve kolonyalizmine dair anlatıları yeniden tanımlar ve karmaşıklaştırır.

Keywords

Kültürlerarası tecrübeler, tıp, Aydınlanma, seyahat, Mekke yağı, Osmanlı Doğu Akdeniz’i

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