Besim Ömer Akalın practised at a period when medicine itself was being rebuilt on new foundations.
The record lists Besim Ömer Akalın as Turkish physician (1862–1940).
Besim Ömer Akalın was born at Arta in 1862. His recorded nationality is Turkey. He trained at Kuleli Military High School and Gülhane Training and Research Hospital.
Anaesthesia, antisepsis and germ theory arrived within fifty years and made modern surgery possible for the first time.
His posts were held at Istanbul University.
Clinical knowledge is accumulated slowly and revised often, usually at some cost.
That the work was done from Turkey matters: hospitals, training and research funding are unevenly distributed, and they decide which questions can be asked.
Besim Ömer Akalın died in 1940, aged 78. What survives is the change in practice, which is how a medical life is actually measured.
Achievements
- Held posts at Istanbul University
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