This paper argues that 19th century Ottoman medical education and was shaped by as well as itself shaped global and interconfessional networks. Until the Imperial Military Medical Academy ’s establishment in Istanbul in 1827, Ottoman Muslim and non-Muslim doctors trained and practiced separately. Armenian, Rum and Jewish physicians often trained at European institutions while Muslim physicians trained at Ottoman medreses. The founding of this school, which trained non-Muslims and Muslims together in military medicine, disrupted these norms and generated a new professional class. This paper explores the networks in which these subsequent generations of doctors participated and the social as well as scientific results of these ties. For “external” ties, I focus on French and Greek connections. The academy initially used French textbooks and taught its classes in French, and many Ottoman subjects went to France for subsequent medical training, often with financial support from the Ottoman state. Late 18th century changes in French hospital medicine caught global, not just Ottoman, attention, so its influence on Ottoman medical reform is not necessarily surprising. However, I argue that how Ottoman doctors built community abroad in Paris, how those experiences shaped their social and political perspectives, and how they retained those experiences and connections upon returning to Ottoman domains is particular. Athens, in contrast, was not a global medical hub but was, until the 1820s, an Ottoman city, one that after Greek independence eventually became a capital city and, in 1837, the home of the University of Athens and its medical school. The new Kingdom of Greece encouraged Ottoman Rum subjects to cross the border to study and also supported Hellenizing schools within the empire, and this paper examines the exchange of knowledge between doctors in the new Greek state and Rum doctors within the empire.