Physicians gained unique Western access to harems and produced harem ethnography

Evidence

Some travelers were doctors, and we hear of physicians who went touring in the Middle East, perhaps because they had been told that as physicians they had opportunities which no other westerner could hope to have. A fascinating Irish physician called R. R. Madden wrote a two-volume account of his travels in Turkey, Egypt, Nubia and Palestine between 1824 and 1827. These involved frequent visits to harems, which he was able to enter as a doctor, whereas other males were of course totally forbidden: he was entirely virtuous, he hastens to assure us. He felt the ladies’ pulses through a curtain, but was able to give some of the most interesting accounts of the harem. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 780

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds the Said-adjacent cluster: the doctor-as-legible-observer of the harem is a gendered knowledge-production mechanism, complementing male fantasy accounts; echoes Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s letters and the broader harem-visit literature of Orientalism. — connects to: European portrayals of the harem projected fantasy rather than observed reality — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 306