Ottoman Jews and the emergence of modern psychiatry in the Ottoman Empire during the late nineteenth century

• In Event: Ritual Bodies, Ritual Spaces in 19th Century Europe

Abstract

This paper explores how Ottoman Jews were depicted in the medical literature during the emergence of modern psychiatry in the Ottoman Empire and also how one prominent Sephardic Jew played an essential role in the initial phase of this development. Istanbul-born Sephardic Jew Avram Kastro worked as a physician in the Ottoman Empire for about forty-five years. Between 1882 and 1908, he served as the chief physician at the imperial lunatic asylum Toptaşı. Known for his close personal ties with Sultan Abdulhamid II, he was forced into retirement following the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. Nevertheless, his collection of detailed statistical data on asylums contributed to the emergence of modern psychiatry in the Empire. In the post-1908 period, young Turkish Muslim psychiatrists started to present their research in Europe concerning the situation of the lunatic asylums. Their presentations, which were later published as booklets, were in line with the dominant discussions within the field of psychiatry and frequently dwelled on the relationship between civilization and mental illnesses arguing that mental illnesses were signs and products of a civilized society. Paradoxically, in their talks, they stated that Turks of the Empire were free of mental illnesses while attributing specific mental disorders to non-Muslim communities. Jews, in this regard, were claimed to be susceptible to schizophrenia which was also referred to as DEMENTIA PRAECOX (early dementia). As various power centers such as the central government, communal leadership, and medical professionals were active in the debates surrounding the "insane," non-Muslim communities were part of the discussion. Based on documents from the Ottoman State Archives, medical magazines, and medico-legal reports, this paper argues that in a period marked by imperial sociopolitical changes, through the popular press and medical literature, insanity became an object of public concern as the "insane" became an object for the newly emerging field of psychiatry. Consequently, these "abnormal" bodies became sites of intervention overlapping with the discourses surrounding abnormality, communal identity, and civilization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in a period marked by the understanding of mental disorders as signs of progress and intellectual advancement.

Author

• Canan Bolel, University of Washington