Constantin Carathéodory: a Case Study of 19th Century European Science in the Ottoman Empire

Abstract

One can find an account of the Constantinople plague from a European point of view in a book on the Domestic Manners of the Turks written by the English chronicler Julia Pardoe (1838), who was present in that city when the plague broke out in 1836. Further impressions are also documented in a letter from Constantinople dated 22 February 1837 by Helmuth Graf von Moltke (1984), who had been employed by the Ottomans as an instructor of their army without military title between 1836 and 1839 and who would later become the German Chief of the General Staff in the German-French war of 1870-1871.