Abstract
During the 19th century, scientific knowledge and medical influence did not flow exclusively from the West to the East. As such, non-Westerns were not passive recipients of Western sciences, but rather active transformers. Recent scholarship on knowledge production in the Ottoman Empire demonstrates that ideas were discussed and debated in very local terms. Public engagement in print ( as well as in salons and educational institutions ) allowed the creation of a circulation network among the various cities of the Ottoman world. Subsequently, medicine became part of the Ottoman Empire’s desire to compete with its European competitors for the hearts and souls of its citizens in the metropole and the peripheries.
In this paper, I will focus on Armenian doctors who created a medical network from Vienna to Istanbul, Tbilisi, Beirut, and Alexandria. I will argue that through the professionalization of medicine Armenian became a medical language, which allowed doctors to cross four different empires ( i.e., Ottoman, Habsburg, Russian, and British ) and circulate medical knowledge. While traversing these borders, doctors became both state and non-state agents capable of communicating in various languages such as French, Ottoman, German, Russian and Armenian. Translating works to a common language, i.e., Armenian gave these doctors an advantage over their colleagues and enabled them to bypass imperial and geographical boundaries.
These doctors played prominent roles in describing the socio-medical problems of the different Armenian communities across empires. To create productive and healthy subjects, they redefined “moral” and “immoral” behavior. As such, they viewed themselves as healers of both individual and national bodies. They penetrated the productive and reproductive spheres of society and tried to shape the behavior of ordinary people through medicine. Within this context, the doctor gained prestige, power, and prominence through clinical medicine, certification, and stethoscope. As a result, he could now dominate and colonize the body of the patient both in the metropole and the periphery. Consequently, the Armenian communities, throughout the Mediterranean, experienced a substantial increase in medical knowledge production, circulation, and translation.
Discipline
Geographic Area
Anatolia
Armenia
Caucasus
Europe
Lebanon
Ottoman Empire
Sub Area