Show/Hide Menu
Hide/Show Apps
anonymousUser
Logout
Türkçe
Türkçe
Search
Search
Login
Login
OpenMETU
OpenMETU
About
About
Açık Bilim Politikası
Açık Bilim Politikası
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Browse
Browse
By Issue Date
By Issue Date
Authors
Authors
Titles
Titles
Subjects
Subjects
Communities & Collections
Communities & Collections
"An inconsequential boil" or a "terrible disease"? Social perceptions of and state responses to syphilis in the late Ottoman empire
Date
2011-01-01
Author
Boyar, Ebru
Metadata
Show full item record
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
.
Item Usage Stats
5
views
0
downloads
From the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman state started to perceive syphilis as a dangerous menace threatening the security of the state and the welfare of society. It therefore began to undertake measures to contain the disease and prevent it spreading. In particular the province of Kastamonu became the hub of the campaign against syphilis and the central government set up an invasive system of enforced pre-nuptial health checks, regular controls of the hamams and barber shops there, as well as imposing restrictions on the mobility of local residents, controls which had a direct impact on the everyday lives of the population. Among these measures the effective application of pre-nuptial health checks, directed at both male and female subjects of the province, was hampered by the resistance of the population, who did not perceive syphilis as dangerous, and in consequence the local and central governments and their agents, such as the medical personnel, who were responsible for the imposition of such measures, were forced to modify some measures and ignore others in order to avoid a confrontation with the local population.
Subject Keywords
Syphilis
,
Province of Kastamonu
,
Pre-nuptial health checks
,
Popular resistance
,
Late Ottoman Empire
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/39449
Journal
TURKISH HISTORICAL REVIEW
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1163/187754611x603074
Collections
Department of International Relations, Article