Description

A medical book in French language, published in Istanbul, is a pioneering work on the modern medical education in Istanbul. It includes the lectures, mostly on diseases, for students of the Imperial medical school in Istanbul. The image on the back cover illustrates a class in the school.

The author was an Austrian medical doctor Karl Ambros Bernard (Charles Ambroise Bernard, 1810-1844), who is known as a founder of the modern medical education and pharmacology in the Ottoman Empire and a pioneer of pharmaceutical terms in Ottoman / Turkish language.

Bernard was born in Jilemnice (German Starkenbach) in today’s Czech republic. After finishing the study of medicine, he was send to Bukowina to fight the cholera. In 1838, he moved to Istanbul on the invitation of the sultan Mahmud II. to reorganize the Imperial medical school for the army doctors in Galata based on the principle of the Viennese Josephinum.

During his six years in Istanbul Karl Ambros Bernard became a pioneer of the modern pharmacology and medical education in Istanbul. He published four medical books, one of which he translated to Ottoman, using new medical terminology.

In 1844, Bernard published his most famous and influential book, Pharmacopoea Castrensis Ottomana, which he, according to the introduction from September 16th, intended to translate into Turkish soon.

Bernard died suddenly a month later at the age of 34 and was buried in Istanbul on November 2nd, 1844. Today a memorial plate on the gate to the Catholic Church Saint Mary Draperis on İstiklal Avenue in Istanbul commemorates this ingenious medical doctor.

We would not find any institutional examples on Worldcat.