The Sick Man and his Medicine: Public Health Reform in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt

Abstract

This paper examines the transformation of public health institutions in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt in the nineteenth century. I argue that the region’s political, financial, and military vulnerability in that period led to a wide-ranging institutional reform movement that also had a great impact on the public health system. As the state centralized, it began to intervene directly in the lives and bodies of its population with the purpose of developing a strong, healthy polity that would be able to compete in the international arena of states. Examples of this intervention included the establishment of professional medical and pharmacy schools and the implementation of compulsory vaccinations, quarantines, and rigorous inspection of food and drugs in the marketplace. Although these measures were often contested and resisted, and despite a perennial shortage of financial resources, the efforts of nineteenth-century Ottoman and Egyptian statesmen and professionals did lay the groundwork for modern public health care in the Middle East.