Dis­ease and death in Ot­toman Crete: con­ti­nu­ities and changes in so­cial at­ti­tudes and state pol­icy

This es­say tack­les the is­sues of dis­ease and death in Crete dur­ing the Ot­toman pe­riod through the ev­i­dence pri­mar­ily of Ot­toman archival sources and epi­taphs. It fo­cuses on three as­pects, namely state pol­icy, med­ical ser­vices and so­cial at­ti­tudes to­wards dis­ease and death. As far as state pol­icy is con­cerned, it is ar­gued that an im­por­tant cri­te­rion for the Ot­toman state to in­ter­vene in mat­ters of pub­lic health was when pub­lic or so­cial or­der was threat­ened. Re­gard­ing med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers, Ot­toman sources dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween physi­cians (hekim, tabib) and sur­geons (cer­rah). Peo­ple made use of their ser­vices, and even re­li­gious-minded texts, such as epi­taphs, sug­gest that Cre­tans were much more ac­tive in fight­ing dis­ease than is of­ten as­sumed. Ul­ti­mately, the study of the ques­tions of dis­ease and death al­lows us to re­vise stereo­types about the fa­tal­ism of tra­di­tional so­ci­eties. Even though there was be­lief in the in­evitabil­ity of God’s will, sub­mis­sion to it was not un­con­di­tional.