In 1897, the renowned psychiatrist Richard von Krafft?Ebing asserted that he had discerned a link between civilization and syphilization; for him the two went “hand in hand.” In proof, he and others argued, paresis and tabes did not exist among “barbarian,” and “uncivilized,” peoples around the world, but only among Europeans. In this equation, Ottomans, along with other Muslim and Asian peoples, found themselves excluded from among the civilized. Did the Ottoman and later Turkish doctors accept the validity of the European science without questioning it, or did they challenge it? This paper argues that Ottoman?Turkish neuropsychiatrists challenged the equation of civilization and syphilization not only in the name of their own empire and nation, but also in the name of other Muslim and Asian peoples. Some even suggested that these European doctors, having been raised with the stories of fairytales and 1001 Nights about the East, were actually the victims of their own baseless beliefs about non?Western peoples. Mounting a two?pronged attack, they first argued that the assumed link between civilization and syphilization was flawed. Secondly, lest their first assertion was not enough for the European men of science, they produced statistics to show that paresis and tabes existed among the subjects of the Empire and citizens of the republic in numbers comparable to Europe.