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The study of preparing a new medical terminology had been intensified with the efforts of converting medical lessons into Turkish, in the second half of 19th century. The new medical language was mainly based on Arabic and Persian words. In the first years of the republic period there has been a movement of leaving foreign words. There are not much Arabic or Persian words in medical language today. Current medical terminology and the terminology which had used from the second half of the 19th century until the first years of the Republic are different considerably. As a result it is rather difficult to understand old medical texts today. A limited glossary of three otorhinolaryngology books, which are written with the medical terminology used until 1930's, is being presented in this study.

Since the beginning of 19th century, cholera, which was an endemic disease in India and Bengal, started epidemics in Europe and Middle East and affected the Ottoman Empire first in 1831. Ismail Pasha, who was one of the last Ottoman hekimbashis, wrote a treatise named "Kolera Risalesi" (The Treatise on Cholera), after the cholera epidemic that had broken out in Istanbul in October 1847. In this treatise, which aimed to inform people about cholera, description and causes of cholera is briefly described, and precautions which are necessary to prevent the disease and treatment methods be performed after the disease spread.

This article deals with the etymology and semantics of the term istiska' which was interpreted as cirrhosis in some studies. The meaning of the term in the old medical texts and dictionaries was studied by quoting examples from original sources. It is concluded that istiska was used for dropsy, that is, an abnormal accumulation of serous fluid in tissue or in a cavity of a body, such as the abdomen, pleura, thorax, peritoneum etc.; and in the 19th and 20th centuries it meant hydrax and, was used as the prefix hydr- or hydro-. The text also describes the various forms of istiska' found in the Turkish terminology.