Since September I have been doing research for my dissertation tentatively titled "Doctoring Society: The Socio-Political History of the Late Ottoman Medical Profession," where I am exploring how transformations in medical education and practice in the nineteenth century elevated the status of doctors who then participated in society and politics in different ways than before. I am currently on a Joint Greece-Turkey Fulbright grant, so I was based in Thessaloniki from September to January, where I consulted many types of archives and sources, including Ottoman administrative records, literary archives holding physicians’ private papers, and journals and statistical reports held at university and city archives. I also benefited from inhabiting the spaces I was studying, visiting old hospitals, homes, and institutions from the period that are still standing. I am now in Istanbul where I have been visiting the main Ottoman archives, the Greek consular archives, and Suleymaniye, Millet, and Ataturk libraries, among others, exploring similarly diverse sources.
February 24, 2020