Ottoman Medicines and Disease with Miri Shefer Mossensohn
Episode 69 - July 11, 2021
![Ottoman Medicne Book Cover](https://infectioushistorians.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/81vLzSmRt0L.jpg)
Miri Shefer Mossensohn sits down with Merle and Lee to talk about Ottoman history of medicines and disease. She begins by discussing the broad contours of medicine and disease in the Ottoman Empire, which lasted for 600 years. Miri reveals the wide variety of medical individuals and institutions that existed in the Ottoman world, with few standardized systems until the 19th century, that meant people who sought treatment had huge numbers of options. During the conversation, she offers numerous examples of how infectious diseases were constantly around and accepted, leading to little proactive government policy. At the end, Miri discusses her time teaching a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Islamic history.
Further Reading
- Nükhet Varlık, Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347-1600, Cambridge 2015.
- Nükhet Varlık (ed.), Plague and Contagion in the Islamic Mediterranean: New Histories of Disease in Ottoman Society, Kalamazoo 2017.
- Yaron Ayalon, Natural Disasters in the Ottoman Empire: Plague, Famine and Other Misfortunes, Cambridge 2015.
- Miri Shefer-Mossensohn, Ottoman Medicine: Healing and Medical Institutions, 1500-1700, Albany 2009.
Our Guest
Miri Shefer-Mossensohn,
Associate Professor, Department of Middle Eastern & African History, Tel Aviv University
![Miri Shefer Mossensohn](https://infectioushistorians.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Miri2_550X550-300x300.jpg)