Overcoming Secrecy: Syphilis and Sex Education in the Late Ottoman Period

Although syphilis existed in Ottoman society from the sixteenth century, it became an alarming medical and social concern with the intensification of the mobility of the population from and to the Ottoman countryside after the Crimean War of 1854-56. By the end of the nineteenth century, it would have been common for one to encounter syphilis at varying rates in any Ottoman province. This paper will discuss the changing perspectives regarding sexuality and sexual health in the Ottoman society at this historical moment in relation to prevalence of syphilis. It will investigate how Ottoman medical authorities sought to prevent syphilis’ damaging impacts by utilizing print culture and public education to disseminate new understandings of sex and sexuality that had formerly been considered private, even taboo. Along with advice literature focusing on proper love and marriage, this paper will analyze emerging medical advice literature for general readership that introduced new discourses on sexuality framed around the basic premises of public health and moral hygiene. While this genre predominantly sought to reach urban-dweller youth, damaging impacts of syphilis were not limited to urban centers; in fact, the “innocent” form of syphilis was most prevalent in the Ottoman countryside, where local syphilis physicians were authorized to perform public health propaganda by giving lectures in villages about protection from syphilis. This paper will explore dissemination of medical knowledge and practices in different Ottoman socio-medical landscapes to explain the emergence of popular and medical understandings of sex and sex education in late Ottoman society.