Syphilis, a known sexually transmitted disease, emerged in new non-venereal forms in the nineteenth century with an ability to reach every remote corner. Through an innocent touch in a barber shop or a pleasing puff at the tip of a narghile, it was only a matter of moment to transmit the disease. As opposed to other fatal diseases such as cholera and plague, syphilis followed long term stages to take over the human body. Hence, it neither manifested itself nor killed its victim suddenly. Furthermore, syphilis was hard to diagnose for syphilis bacteria had the ability of mimicking other internal diseases; therefore, malpractice was very common. Yet syphilis was not only a perplexing medical question but also a significant source of social anxiety among the Ottoman public, causing shame and fear. Syphilis along with other venereal diseases became an alarming issue for the Ottomans following the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-78, at the end of which most of the territories in the Balkans and Caucasia were lost, and many immigrants and refugees, some of them possibly carrying the disease, arrived in Anatolia. In addition, the increase in the migration of seasonal workers from rural to urban centers as well as from neighboring countries accelerated the spread of syphilis to new regions. By the end of the century, it would have been common for one to encounter syphilis at varying rates in any Ottoman province. This paper explores the impact of governing concern of the medical and political circles over syphilis particularly among male population that became the primary target of the prevention measures during the outbreak of syphilis. Male population was by far the most mobile segment of the Ottoman society for they served in the army as soldiers, worked as seasonal workers and travelled as merchants. Often times sharing homosocial spaces such as coffeehouses, public baths, and bachelor houses, male population became both the target and the medium of syphilis. Analyzing the health regulations for the elimination of syphilis, manuals for the soldiers and self-help books for general readership published by pioneering gynecologists, this paper will address the efforts of Ottoman medical authorities to prioritize the surveillance of male population that contributed to the emergence of new and medicalized discourse and practices regarding masculinity in the late Ottoman Empire.

Late early and early twentieth century was a period where “modern” conceptions of impotence emerged. While in the earlier times, impotence was associated with religious or supernatural factors, discussions of impotence started to emphasize physiological, biological, and psychological causes with the development of “modern medicine”. Male sexual dysfunctions in general and impotency in particular have also been discussed in detail in print books. Those books handled the reasons and possible remedies of impotency. However, despite their medical scope, the conceptions of impotence also reflected contemporary anxieties of masculinity. In other words, the debates and conceptions of impotence are loaded with notions of manliness and virility. Impotence was seen as the lack or deficiency of manliness and hence a major source of male anxiety. In a very intriguing way, impotence is also associated with obscenity. Almost all the writings on impotence presented excessive sexuality as the main cause of impotence. Those books warned the male audience that excessive sexual activity would lead to the waste of masculine energy and would call for impotency eventually. Besides too much sexual activity, masturbation, and deviance were seen as threats to masculinity. This conception of impotence was a source of male anxiety and made the definition of ideal manliness highly ambiguous. This presentation will examine the conceptions of impotence and the late Ottoman anxieties of masculinity. The conceptions of impotence have remained a highly overlooked area in Ottoman history. This presentation will deal with the questions of ideal masculinity, male anxiety, and male body. Hence it will scrutinize the grey areas between malady and normalcy.

As far as intellectual psychology is concerned, the foundation of psychology as ‘the scientific study of the soul’ in the Ottoman Empire took place between the 1870s and the 1920s, through the surfacing of psychology textbooks with a decreasing number of references to the classical Islamic perspective. Filibeli Ahmed Hilmi contributed to the process of the foundation of psychology through his work İlm-i Ahval el-Ruh [Psychology] (1911/12) by acknowledging the loss of the incontestability of religious sacredness of human nature as exempted creature (müstesna mahluk) from the view of science. In this work psychology was designed to take over the responsibility of establishing the complexity and specialty of human beings. This paper aims to unfold the Ottomans’ responses to the entrance of the medicalization of the human soul and the gradual removal of Islamic perspectives of human nature from the realm of psychology. More specifically it asks the questions (1) to what extent the promotion of man as a controllable, and adjustable entity defined and governed solely by natural laws sparked controversy, (2) to what extent Ahmed Hilmi’s response to physiological reductionism could be understood within one-dimensional paradigms of Islam versus science, materialism versus spiritualism. In the Ottoman context, it is not a coincidence that intellectuals, who engaged in the debate between materialism and spiritualism, made important contributions to the psychological thinking up until the 1920s. Mechanistic explanations of human nature and physiological reductionism constituted the backbones of intellectual discussions as to human nature at the intersection of psychology and biological materialism, which determined Ottoman intellectuals’ answers to the question to which degree science should/could determine human nature. Set against the backdrop of Ottoman modernization, Ahmed Hilmi’s very controlled relationship with science, attributing it great importance while reminding the readers of its limitations, as a cautious participant of scientific circles of his time, exemplifies Ottomans’ efforts to embrace the ‘new,’ - such as medical perspective - in ‘perfect’ doses, while allowing space for certain aspects of the ‘old,’ –such as moral and romantic views of human nature - in the process of Ottoman modernization. This aspect of the debate between materialism and spiritualism helps us contextualize the Ottomans in a global intellectual framework of psychological studies in the early 20th century and have a more nuanced understanding of it.

Toplum ve Bilim [Society and Science], one of the leading journals in Turkey, published a special issue dedicated to Psychoanalysis in 1996. A pertinent image, Pierre-André Brouillet’s "Un Leçon Clinique à la Salpêtrière" (1887), appears on the front cover of this issue. In this painting Brouillet depicts Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893), French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology often hailed as the founder of modern neurology, delivering a lecture to a group of male spectators. What renders this painting particularly haunting is the hysterical patient, “Blanche” (Marie) Wittman, who partakes in this medical spectacle as Charcot’s test subject. Half conscious and assisted by two nurses, Blanche is being scrutinized by Charcot. In fact, Brouillet’s painting captures a historical phenomenon. Back in the second half of the 19th century, Charcot regularly staged his hysterics on lecture halls that resembled theatres, which attracted a great deal of attention not only from Parisian medical students but also from a diverse body of intellectuals. At the turn of the 20th century, in Istanbul, in a manner similar to Jean-Martin Charcot, Mazhar Osman (1884-1951) held weekly lecture series where he exhibited his hysterics. Often praised as the founder of modern psychiatry and neurology in Turkey, Mazhar Osman kept his lectures open to the public. Hysterical cases exhibited during these spectacles were published in a journal, Şişli Müessesesinde Emraz-ı Akliye ve Asabiye Müsamereleri [Spectacles of Mental and Nervous Diseases in Şişli Institution], between 1916 and 1918. This paper will investigate the journal in question in an attempt to gain insight into the treatment and diagnosis of hysteria in the late Ottoman period. I’m particularly concerned with the gendered aspect of Mazhar Osman’s medical spectacles. The guiding questions for this paper are: given the fact that Ottoman Empire was governed by Islamic precepts that aligned women with the private sphere, were there any female hysterics that were exposed to the male gaze (read public sphere) as part of a medical spectacle? Did occupying the category of “patient” alter or override the woman’s gender position? To what extent late Ottoman “hysteria” was exclusively female? Starting with the basic question of whether any shift in the understanding of hysteria occurred in early 20th century Ottoman Empire, this paper will seek to shed light on a web of issues ranging from bodily privacy to the interpretive “tools” of medical authorities.