Secil Yilmaz

Assistant Professor of History Franklin and Marshall College

Although it had existed in Ottoman society since the sixteenth century, syphilis became an alarming public health question in the second half of the nineteenth century as a consequence of increased mobility, particularly among soldiers, Muslim immigrants, and seasonal workers traveling about the Ottoman countryside. The disease provoked a combination of fear, shame, and secrecy, as Ottoman physicians formulated socio-medical prescriptions that re-fashioned gender roles and sexual norms and led to the medicalization of love, marriage, and desire.