The SHIFA-ANA project is excited to announce our next event in our monthly lecture series on February 26th, 2025 at 11:00 am EST! In this session Akif Ercihan Yerlioglu of Bogazici University will give a lecture titled “Not Covered in the Writings of Islamic Physicians”: Scurvy in Early Modern Ottoman Medicine.
Since we have to be present in a room without a hybrid system, the lecture will unfortunately
be in person for this time only. Please RSVP us through this link in advance if you would like
to join in person. In case you have problems accessing the link, please inform us about your participation by sending an email to shifaana.project@rutgers.edu. The lecture will be held at ANAMED, Beyoğlu.
Abstract:
“In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Ottoman medical scholars increasingly
engaged with European medical ideas, incorporating discussions of diseases that were not
necessarily endemic to the empire. Among these was scurvy, a condition most commonly
associated with long sea voyages and European maritime expansion. This paper explores
how Ottoman physicians—beginning with Ibn Sellūm and continuing through ʿÖmer Şifāʾī,
ʿAlī Münşī, ʿAbbās Vesīm, and Ṣubḥīzāde ʿAbdü’l-ʿazīz—approached scurvy within their
medical treatises. Their writings reveal an evolving schol“rly landscape in which medical
practitioners sought to balance inherited Galenic traditions with new approaches to disease,
demonstrating an increasing openness to experimentation, translation, and medical
pluralism.”