Investigation of the hand-written ottoman manuscript titled "Envâ-i Emrâz" preserved in the National Library Collection in terms of phytotherapy

Plants have served humanity for health, food, and other purposes since ancient times. Therefore, medicine and pharmacy have been two professions that are not separated from each other for centuries, when plants are used for therapeutic purposes. There are many written sources about the therapeutic use of plants since prehistoric times. Ensuring the use of the plants used in treatment by passing them through a scientific filter is important in terms of public health. In this thesis study, contributions of the ancient civilizations particularly in Mesopotamia (e.g. Sumerian, Babillion, Hittite, Greek) as well as Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and Islamic civilizations are briefly reviewed in "General Information" section, considering the development process of medicine and herbal therapy. The manuscript named "Envâ-ı Emrâz", written in ancient Turkish and related to phytotherapy, belonging to the Ottoman period, which is preserved in the collection of the Directorate of Manuscripts in the National Library, has been translated into today's Turkish within the scope of the thesis and medical information it contains; the systems to which the diseases belong, the preparation methods of the drugs used in the treatment and the equivalents of the plants mentioned in the work in the literature. The book named Envâ-ı Emrâz consists of 3 chapters having 604 babs. The prescriptions of the physician Galen in the first part, the physician Millet in the second part, and the physician of Hippocrates in the third part were written. In each part of the work, all diseases are repeated respectively. In the second chapter, the treatment of war wounds is discussed in particular as being different from other two chapters. The compositions are generally in the form of syrups and pastes obtained by boiling a mixture of plant parts such as leaves, flowers, and roots or or single plant part. Detailed recipes are found very rarely in the manuscript. Generally, it was mentioned in one sentence what would be good for which complaint. Information on uses of the plants were given roughly. Different prescriptions (if any) for the same complaint were given in the same item one after the other. As a result of our thesis, ancient information about the use of medicinal plants in treatment was brought to light, and a contribution was made to the literature for the use of traditional information in modern phytotherapy research