Özet:

The two-act play “The Medicine Bottle” by Ms. Zeliha Osman [Özen]—a Turkish playwright and translator holding a special importance in the history of Turkish literature through her activities supporting Milli Mücadele (The National Struggle)—is noteworthy due to its reflection of the perception of pharmacy in the early years of the Turkish Republic. An original copy of the play, written in Ottoman Turkish and published in a series of school plays, has been registered at the Ataturk University Rare Books Collection (Erzurum). The play is based on the incidents occurring in a small community pharmacy after the assistant pharmacist Hikmet Bey’s realization of his mistake of giving his customer a bottle of extract of opium instead of opium syrup, and Pharmacist Hasan Bey’s backlash toward this fatal error. A forgotten pharmaceutical form named güllaç (cachet), a sort of container made of starch for encapsulating dry powder drugs with unpleasant taste or smell, is also mentioned in the play, together with drug names in French, like Julep gomme (Gum of Julep), Sirop [de] bourgeons de sapin (Pine bud syrup), Sirop d’opium (Opium syrup), and Teinture d’Iode (Tincture of Iodine). In this presentation, The Medicine Bottle’s significance in terms of Turkish history of medicine and pharmacy will be discussed in light of historical data and documents

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