ABSTRACT
Some licensed physicians—most of them Turkish but toward the end of the period including some Jews and Arabs—operated as part of the military in army hospitals, and as part of the Ottoman health service. In the towns there were 'physicalist' specialists in pharmacy, bloodletting and leeching, cauterization, wound-piercing, and bone-setting. As of the 19th century there were also some professional practitioners who had assisted army physicians as medical orderlies in the Turkish army. Ottoman westernizing reforms included attempts to incorporate western science and medicine, but in the peripheral region of Palestine in the 19th century state involvement in problems of medical care was minimal. The increasing penetration of western powers into Palestine in the second half of the 19th century brought with it the expansion of western medical culture in the area. In Europe, hospitals were established by voluntary, charitable organizations, often religious ones.
