Şerafeddin Sabuncuoğlu

Şerafeddin Sabuncuoğlu (1385 to 1468) was a medieval Ottoman surgeon and physician who practiced in Amasya and directed the Amasya Dar-es Sifa Hospital for almost fourteen years. He is the author of the Cerrahiyyetu'l-Haniyye, known as Imperial Surgery, written in Turkish in 1465 when he was 80 and described as the first illustrated surgical atlas and the last major medical encyclopedia of the Islamic world. Although it draws heavily on Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi's Al-Tasrif, it adds three chapters of his own covering 134 surgical interventions and 156 instruments, and it records surgical complications and credits knowledge taken from others. It illustrates female surgeons for the first time, and he is said to have tested treatments on animals and on himself before using them on patients. He recommended removing small breast cancers at an early stage, and the book was presented to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II. The work was rediscovered by the historian Süheyl Ünver in 1939. This entry is a historical record, not medical advice.