Türkiye Tıp Tarihinin Latince Kaynakları: Dissertatio Inauguralis Medica De Peste Orientali,… Marcus Marchand, Constantinopolitanus (1831)
Tomas Terziyan, Şeref EtkerDr. Marko Marchand (İstanbul, 1807 - İstanbul, 1879) Viyana Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi’nden, 29 Ocak 1831 tarihinde De Peste Orientali (Şark vebası) üzerine hazırladığı tezini savunarak mezun olmuştur. Marchand’ın Latince olarak kaleme aldığı 34 sayfalık (5.600 sözcük) mezuniyet çalışması aynı yıl içinde Viyana’daki Mıkhitarist manastırı matbaasında basılmıştır. Bir süre St. Petersburg Akademisi’nde de öğrenim gören Dr. Marchand, Türkiye’ye dönüşünde 1839’da Meclis-i Umur-ı Sıhhiye üyeliğine atanmıştır. Osmanlı bürokrasisi içinde Marşan Efendi, Rum toplumunda ise Markos Marsan (Μάρκος Μαρσάν) olarak tanınan Dr. Marchand, Dersaadet Cemiyet-i Tıbbiye-i Şahanesi ile Hilal-i Ahmer Cemiyeti’nin kurucularındandır; Meclis-i Tahaffuz’da (Conseil supérieur de Santé) yöneticilik yapmış ve Cemiyet-i Tıbbiye-i Şahane’nin başkanlığında bulunmuştur. Marchand, “[Bu tezi] yapmaya beni zorlayan başlıca neden vatanımın amansız düşmanı… [ve] bugüne kadar alt edilemeyen hastalığın bizzat kendisidir” girişiyle, ülkesindeki yıkıcı etkisi yüzünden veba üzerinde çalışmayı seçtiğini belirtmiştir. Döneminin vebaya değgin “limologia” literatürünü gözden geçiren Marchand, çalışmasına kişisel gözlemlerini, “novi ipsemet Constantinopoli…” girişiyle katmıştır. Dr. Marko Marchand’ın yaşamöyküsü yayımlanmış nekrolojisine ve arşiv belgelerine dayanılarak ortaya çıkarılmıştır. Bu çalışmada, tıp tarihimizde veba ve salgın hastalıkların tarihsel literatüründe değerlendirilmemiş Latince bir kaynak olan Marcus Marchand’ın De Peste Orientali başlıklı tezinin özgün metni incelenmiş ve Türkçe çevirisi sunulmuştur.
Theses in Latin as Sources for Turkish Medical History: Dissertatio Inauguralis Medica De Peste Orientali,… Marcus Marchand, Constantinopolitanus (1831)
Tomas Terziyan, Şeref EtkerDr. Marcus Marchand (b. Istanbul, 1807 – d. Istanbul, 1879) graduated on January 29, 1831 from the Vienna University Medical Faculty after defending his inauguration thesis on the so-called “Oriental plague” titled De Peste Orientali. This text was composed in Latin, and printed at the Mechitarist Congregation Press in Vienna as a small, 34-page (5,600 word) booklet in the same year. Marc Marchand had also attended the St. Petersburg Academy, and was appointed as a member of the General Health Council (Meclis-i Umur-ı Sıhhiye) in 1839 on his return to Istanbul. He was renown as Marshan Effendi within bureaucratic circles, and as Markos Marsan (Μάρκος Μαρσάν) within the Greek Catholic community. Dr. Marchand was one of the founding members of La Société impériale de Médecine de Constantinople (later as the Turkish Medical Society, est. 1856), and of the Ottoman Red Crescent (est. 1868), and served as the Sanitary Intendant on the International Quarantine Board in Istanbul. Marcus Marchand stated that “the reason he felt impelled to choose that subject matter for his medical thesis, was because the disease [pest] itself, which had been an implacable foe in his homeland, could not, at that time be quelled”. In his thesis, Marchand reviews the literature on the plague as penned by lœmologists (i.e. physicians treating plague and pestilential/infectious diseases), and includes personal observations highlighted with the remark “novi ipsemet Constantinopoli” [as known by myself in Constantinople]. The present study gives a biography of Dr. Marc Marchand based on a published obituary and on archival records, followed by a reading and Turkish translation of De Peste Orientalis – as a notable, yet overlooked source for the history of medicine.
Medical dissertations composed in Latin by Ottoman authors have been largely neglected in historical research. Dr. Marcus Marchand’s De Peste Orientali has been discovered as one of these published theses. Marcus Marchand (b. Istanbul, 1807 – d. Istanbul, 1879) attended the Vienna University Medical Faculty between the years 1824 and 1830, and received his Doctoris Medicinæ degree on January 29, 1831 by defending his inauguration thesis on the so-called “Oriental plague”, titled De Peste Orientali. In his concise text comprised of 13 sections, Marchand reviews the nosology and pathology of the bubonic plague as observed in epidemics prevalent in the Levant and Eastern Europe, relying on current lœimology (i.e. related to plague and pestilential/infectious diseases) literature and etiological concepts, with emphasis on clinical conditions and therapeutics. De Peste Orientali was printed in the same year at the Mechitarist Congregation Press in Vienna in a slim (5,600-word, 34-page) booklet. Six extant copies of the publication are catalogued in library holdings. The copy of the thesis the authors have been able to study herein is from a private collection and bears the author’s dedication and the library stamp of Dr. Constantinos Caratheodory (1802-1879), professor of obstetrics and surgery at the Imperial Military Medical Academy in Istanbul.
Marc Marchand attended the St. Petersburg Academy (Académie Impériale des Sciences) after completing his studies in Vienna. On his return to Istanbul, he opted to collaborate in the sanitary reform efforts of Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808 –1839) and was appointed member of the General Health Council (Meclis-i Umur-ı Sıhhiye) in 1839. Marchand was known as Marshan Effendi within bureaucratic circles, and as Μάρκος Μαρσάν [Markos Marsan] within his Greek Catholic community. Subsequently, Dr. Marchand became one of the founding members of the La Société impériale de Médecine de Constantinople (later the Turkish Medical Society, est. 1856) and was elected president of the society in 1860. Marc Marchand was also among the initial board of the of Ottoman Red Crescent (est. 1868). Marchand fulfilled a life-tenure in the capacity of Sanitary Intendant (intendant sanitaire des quarantaines de l’Empire Ottoman) on the International Quarantine Board. In 1872, Dr. Marshan Effendi participated as the Ottoman delegate in the International Conference on Rinderpest (cattle plague) that convened in Vienna. In secondary sources, the name of Dr. Marchand is mentioned erroneously as a French or European representative on the Quarantine Board.
In his introduction to De Peste Orientali, Marc Marchand states that “the reason he felt impelled to choose the subject matter for his medical thesis, was that the disease [pest] itself, had been an implacable foe of his homeland, that had not been able to be quelled up to that time”. Marchand’s personal observations are highlighted throughout the text with the remark “novi ipsemet Constantinopoli” [as known by myself in Constantinople]. Marchand then re-expresses his views on quarantining and protection with the comment: “by commenting that when the plague raged in Constantinople, families [who had] avoided company with the infected remained unharmed” (“… si sententia nostra alicujus esse posset ponderis, perbene scimus, tempore quo pestis Constantinopoli saevit, familias consortium cum infectis vitantes, incolumes manere”). References Marchand cites in his thesis include Daniel Samoïlowitz’s (Самойлович), Mémoire sur la Peste de Moscou, qui, en 1771, ravagea l’Empire de Russe (1783), and Dominique-Jean Larrey’s Relation historique et chirurgicale de l’Expédition de l’Armée d’Orient en Egypte et en Syrie (1803). Marchand quotes the latter title for descriptions of post-mortem findings of plague victims that were conducted in Ottoman Palestine as early as 1799, during the Napoleonic campaigns in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Dr. Marchand was a staunch proponent of contagionism and stood, in particular against the European physicians who opposed maritime quarantine on mercantile grounds. He published polemical articles in the Gazette médicale de Paris and the Gazette médicale d’Orient (Istanbul) challenging their position. In 1842, Dr. Marcus Marchand, together with Drs. Antonio Pezzoni and André Leval of the International Quarantine Board, presented a memorandum to the Académie des Sciences in Paris outlining their epidemiological studies titled: Recherches relatives à la Question de Contagion de la Peste et au Système des Quarantaines, that disputed anti-contagionist claims. Marc Marchand’s conclusions with regard to the contagiousness of the plague and the effectiveness of quarantining for containing of epidemics were to become emblematic for cholera, as well as other communicable diseases.
In his thesis, Marchand subdivides the “cure” for the bubonic plague into three sections (viz. direct, vital, and symptomatic), and attributes the diversity of expert opinions to the confusing and elusive character of its symptomatology. The armamentarium of procedures and remedies mentioned in De Peste Orientali for treating the plague amount to a materia medica, none of which are deemed specific to the plague (Pharmacon absolutum non datur, Thesis V).
The present study gives a biography of Dr. Marc Marchand based on his published obituary and archival records, followed by a reading and Turkish translation of his thesis De Peste Orientali.