[Development of health care services in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Ottoman empire].

Organized health service in Bosnia and Herzegovina practically started by the treatment of the sick in the Hadji Sinan's Tekke that was founded in 1768. Before that, the civilian population had been mainly treated in their homes, while the army were treated in barracks or hired hans (inns). As late as the nineteenth century, health care was provided by quack doctors, treating physicians or surgeons and barbers, who were trained, beside the circumcision of male children, for tooth extraction, broken bone setting, and sometimes even for performing minor surgical operations (a specially trained barber called djerah). The first trained medical personnel were the Franciscans and Jews, who studied at the Universities of Italy, Austria, Hungary etc. The first Muslim trained physicians studied at the Medical Faculty in Istanbul. The first ones were: Dr. Mehmed Serbić and Dr. Zarif Skender, while the first Bosnian graduate in pharmacy was Jakov Sumbul. In Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina worked many a doctor who came from abroad. The majority of them converted to Islam and worked in the barracks, and later on in the Turkish Military Hospital when it was founded in Sarajevo. All of them played an important role in the prevention and treatment of the most frequent mass infectious and non-infectious diseases that were raging among the population--plague, cholera, syphilis, leprosy, tuberculosis, fungoid diseases etc.