Imperial School of Medicine (Ottoman Empire)

Originally commissioned by Sultan Mahmud II in 1827 to be operated by the military, it was the empire's first medical school,[2] modeled on those in the West.

Their foreign language skills and study at European institutions laid the foundation for the establishment of medicine in the Ottoman Empire.

[2] At that time most of the instructors and students at the military medical school were non-Muslims and included Armenians, Arab Christians, Bulgarians, and Greeks.

[8] According to Constantinos Trompoukis and John Lascaratos Greeks were well-represented among founding staff due to their foreign-language skills and their study experiences in Europe.

[1] In addition professors from Germany joined the faculty,[5] Thusly, a sizeable portion of the teaching staff was drawn from the empire's non-Muslim religious communities supplemented by visiting Germans.

[10] It moved to the gardens of Topkapı Palace in Sarayburnu (Seraglio Point) in 1866, and that year alumnus Salih Effendi became the head of the school.

According to Dr. R. Sarell, who was a doctor employed at the Imperial Maternity Hospital in the city, many members had a military background or lacked an education altogether, something he criticised them for.