Opening of a New Era in the Field of Vaccines and Serum with the Spread of Turkish Style
Prof. Dr. Kadircan KESKİNBORA
Bahcesehir U. Faculty Member of Faculty of Medicine
In the face of medical developments that accelerated with the Renaissance in Europe, Turkish-Islamic medicine lost its superiority from the second half of the 17th century. People who produced original guiding works began to disappear in the Ottoman Empire, and new medical works in Europe began to be translated into Arabic and Turkish. The best example of this is that Salih bin Nasrullah bin Sellum, Chief Physician of Sultan Mehmet IV (Avcı), who died in 1669, translated the work of the Austrian physician Paracelsus on iatrochemistry from Latin to Arabic with the help of Süleyman bin İbrahim: “Haza kitab-ı tıbb” -ı cedid-i chemically ahtere ahu Barakelsus ve semmahu bil-latiniye Espagnia”. Just below the title of the book, it is stated that it was translated from Latin to Arabic.
However, the spread of the "Turkish Style Smallpox Vaccine", which was widely applied in Ottoman Turkey in the 17th century, to Europe at the beginning of the 18th century, opened a new era in the field of medicine in the world.
Although smallpox vaccination has been practiced in India and China since ancient times, its application in England and other European countries began in the early 18th century after the Ottoman physician Emanuel Timonius and Lady Mary Montaguee introduced the Turkish method of smallpox vaccination to Europe. During the 18th century, as the Turkish smallpox vaccine spread from England to Russia, from Sweden to Italy, it sparked scientific debate and numerous publications about the origin of the vaccine.
The Indian-style smallpox vaccine, which was similar to the smallpox vaccine that Lady Mary Montague saw in Turkey in 1717, was administered to the young son of the Chinese vizier Wang-Tan by a hermit living in the mountains in the region close to Tibet in China in 1022. It seems possible that Uyghur Turks played a role in the spread of the Indian smallpox vaccine, considering that they manage the close trade relations between India and China. The fact that the Islamic traveler Ibn Battuta, who passed through this region of Tibet adjacent to China at the beginning of the 14th century, specifically stated in his travelogue that the people of this place were similar to the Turks also supports this theory. This vaccination method must have come to Asia Minor with the Seljuks, who spread to the Caucasus in 1055.
It was Emanuel Timonius who wrote the first scientific description of the smallpox vaccine in the form of "inoculation" in Turkey [it turned out that he was an Ottoman physician of Latin (Levantine) origin and the grandson of Vincent Timoni, the court physician of Sultan Murat IV (1611-1640). Emanuel Timonius, an Ottoman physician of Latin origin, wrote in his article published in Latin in 1713 on the "smallpox vaccine in Turkey", stating that this vaccine was applied in China, Circassians, Georgians and other Asian tribes, via the Caucasus, about 40 years ago, in Istanbul in 1673-74. It also claims that it has started to spread.
However, it is stated in the publications of Rıfat Osman, Feridun Nafiz Uzluk and Süheyl Ünver that Turkish Style Smallpox Vaccination was applied in Anatolia and Thrace long before the date given by Timonius. Feridun Nafiz Uzluk identified the phrase "Aşılamacızade Hekim Ali Çelebi" on a tombstone in Istanbul dated 7.11.1697. If it is assumed that this person lived for 65 years, it turns out that his father, who had previously vaccinated against smallpox, did this job in 1632. Rıfat Osman also mentions a ruling dated 1632 written to the judge of Edirne by an Ashici woman. In the work named "Menafi ül-etfal", published in 1846 by Mektebi Tıbbiye-i Adliye-i Şahane printing house, it is stated that in 1679, a man from Anatolia who knew how to make smallpox vaccine vaccinated 5-6 children in Istanbul and Lady Montague heard and saw this and came to England. It is stated that he wrote
French traveler Aubry de la Motraye, who saw the Ottoman Empire and the Circassians in the Caucasus and their Smallpox Vaccination method in 1711 and 1712, told this to Emanuel Timonius in Istanbul in May 1712, and Timonius wrote his views on this matter in Latin and referred to Aubry de la Motraye. gave it to This article, written in Latin in 1713, was the first scientific article on the Smallpox Vaccination Method in Turkey and was later published in 1727 as an appendix to the last part of the second volume of Motraye's travelogue.
Swedish King Louis XII, who took refuge with the Turks after being defeated by the Russian Tsar and stayed in the Demirtaş mansion in Edirne. The treatise on Smallpox Vaccine in Turkey, which was obtained from Timonius for 100 gold coins through Samuel Kragge, the court physician next to Charles, and published in Ephemerides, the magazine of the Academiae Caesareo-Leopoldinae Carolinae in 1717, must be the same treatise. This Latin article by Timonius, XII. Karl's other palace surgeon, Melchior Neumann, translated it into German in his own handwriting, and it is still in the Uppsala University Library in Sweden, in seven pages.
The Turkish Style Smallpox Vaccine, which became a current issue in London through Emanuel Timonius and Lady Montague in England, was tested by doctors on those sentenced to death and positive results were obtained. The German translation of Timonius by Dr. Neumann, the Prussian Court Pharmacist and member of the Academy of Sciences, published by the Johann Jacob Schützen publishing house in 1745, is also very important as it proves how closely the medical experiments in London on the Turkish Smallpox Vaccine were followed in Germany. It is interesting. As a positive result of this experiment conducted on prisoners, the British Royal family was also vaccinated with the Turkish Style Smallpox Vaccine, and this vaccine immediately spread from England to Russia, from Sweden to Italy and France, and "vaccination" by Edward Jenner in 1796. It led to the discovery of a method of inoculation into humans by taking it from cows. It should be noted that Jenner did the Turkish Style Smallpox Vaccination, that is, "inoculation", until he applied this new "vaccination" method.
After the positive results of the "henna" bark, which came to Europe from Peru at the end of the 17th century, in the treatment of malaria and feverish diseases, and shook the humoral pathology and views on iatrochemistry that had prevailed until then, the Turkish Style Smallpox Vaccine came to Europe in the 18th century. Its spread in Europe and Edward Jenner's discovery of "vaccination" opened completely new horizons in medicine and laid the groundwork for the discovery of other vaccines and serums in the future.
RESOURCES
- Terzioğlu A. The Origin of Turkish Style Smallpox Vaccine and Its Spread to Europe. Turkish World History and Culture Magazine November 2016; Issue:239, pp.14-19.
- Cartwright FF, Biddiss MD. Disease and History. New York, NY, Dorset Press, 1991, pp. 29-53, 113-166.