Infertility in the Late Ottoman Advice Book

Although nineteenth century was a period where female reproductive functions were scrutinized and politicized by medical and political elites, infertility or the involuntary childlessness did not attract the attention of Ottoman pronatalists until late century. The cases of involuntary childlessness and the reproductive dysfunctions first attracted the attention of medical doctors. The medicalization of infertility constructed this problem as an abnormality and the infertile as a patient to be cured. However, shortly non-medical works on infertility also emerged as part of the debates on population increase, and normative and popular works welcomed this issue as an opportunity to express broader concerns about the anxieties about demography. Besides offering clues about the conceptualization of femininity, the debates on infertility also problematized the male body. As such, books on infertility is one rare field where Ottoman pronatalism targeted male body and the male reproductive experience beside the female ones. The books on infertility hint the early premises of eugenic ideas as conceived by the Ottoman doctors and the intellectuals. This paper deals with the normative and medical literature on infertility and discusses the ambivalent representations of infertility and the infertile in the late nineteenth early twentieth century Ottoman society. Through the analysis of the debates on infertility it will also discuss the reconstruction of norms about sexuality and the conceptions of female body