LAUSR

Dear Editor: We read with interest the comments made by Ortug [1] to our paper BŞânîzâde Mehmed Atâullah Efendi (1771?–1826), who is the author of the first modern anatomy bookMir’âtü’lEbdân fî Teşrîhi Âzâü’l-İnsân in the Ottoman Empire^ [2], and we thank the author for the careful reading of our article. We think that this reply letter gives us the opportunity to explain some aspects of our study in detail. In our article [2], we give general information about Şânîzâde’s life and books.Wementioned 56 anatomical drawings in the book named Mir’âtü’l-Ebdân fî Teşrîhi Âzâü’lİnsân. We state that Şânîzâde referred to different authors for some of these drawings, and did not make any references to others. However, we did not make a comprehensive evaluation on the origin of these drawings and say whether he used these pictures exactly the same or changed them. First of all, we state that we made comprehensive literature search before writing our paper. As a result of this searching, we analyzed the article of Ortug et al. [3] in detail. However, due to the fact that there are some important inconsistencies in this article, we did not find it appropriate to refer. Although both Ortug [1] and Ortug et al. [3] state that Şânîzâde received the 46 out of 56 images from Jean Palfin’s (1650–1730) book published in 1753 named Anatomie Chirurgicale, Ou Description Exacte Des Parties Du Corps Humain, Avec Des Remarques Utiles Aux Chirurgiens dans la Pratique de leur [4], after a brief evaluation, we believed that this is not true. We found that some of these drawings already exist in previous edition of Jean Palfin’s book (Fig. 1) published in 1734 [5] and Philip Verheyen’s (1648–1710) book named Corporis Humani Anatomiæ (Fig. 1) published in 1693 [6]. For illustrative purposes, some of the pictures in all four books are shown in Fig. 2. Additionally, we also are not sure if these pictures existed in an earlier source. Although there are some important errors in the article of Ortug et al. [3], it is clear that there is a comprehensive study. Their study [3] will probably give chance for more detailed and comprehensive studies in the future. But, our paper [2] is only a cover editorial, not a full paper, so we do not give detailed analysis of these pictures. In accordance with the scope of the journal also (cover editorial should deal with subjects of general informative interest and should not surpass 500 words and references should be restricted to 5), the major intention of our paper is Şânîzâde’s life, book, and what Şânîzâde wrote about the pictures in his book. To address Ortug’s [1] opinions, we offer the following: