THE TURKISH INNOVATORS

Serefeddin SabuncuoÄŸlu (1385-1468), who lived in the city of Amasya in central Anatolia, wrote the first illustrated surgical textbook in Turkish-Islamic medical literature, namely Cerrahiyyetü’l-Haniyye (Imperial Surgery), in 1465. 
The book included descriptions and illustrations of many surgical procedures, incisional techniques and instruments. Only three handwritten copies are preserved which are deposited in Paris and Istanbul. The book consists of three chapters and is divided into 193 sections. 
The book reviewed Greek, Roman, Arabic and Turkish surgical techniques and is based on the author’s experiences. Among the ophthalmic procedures he described were cataract couching, eyelid operations of warts, chalazion, metaplastic lashes, symblepharon, entropion, ectropion and ptosis, ocular surface surgeries of pterygium and pannus, and an operation of creating a fistula into the nose through the skin near to the eye. 
Behçet disease
Hulusi Behçet (1889-1948) was born in Istanbul on February 20, 1889. He graduated from medicine at Gülhane Military Medical Academy and specialised in dermatology and venereal disease. 
He worked as a consultant dermatologist in the Edirne Military Hospital until 1918 when he moved to work at departments of dermatology and syphilis, first in Budapest and then in Berlin. 
Later he moved to Istanbul Vakžf Guraba Hospital and became a professor and director of the Istanbul University department of dermatology and venereal diseases in 1933. In the years 1924-1925 he made his first observations on the disease later named after him. The first observation started with a patient who had been examined because of eye disturbances, recurrent oral and genital ulcers. 
Behçet, who continued to examine the patient after his loss of vision, thought that the causative agent was a virus. The second patient was a woman with oral and genital ulcers and eye redness who presented in 1930, but could not be diagnosed until 1935. Behçet reported his idea of the new entity in 1936-37. Later it was named Behçet Disease.

*    Dr Andrzej Grzybowski, Department of Ophthalmology, Poznan City Hospital, Poland; Chair of Ophthalmology, University of Warmia and Mazury, Olsztyn, Poland