On the Ottoman consent documents for medical interventions and the modern concept of informed consent

Information for patients prior to medical intervention is one of the principles of modern medical practice. In this study, we looked at an earlier practice of this principle. Ottoman judges had record books called sicil. One of the categories in sicils was the consent documents called riza senedi, which was a patient-physician contract approved by the courts. These contracts were especially for the protection of physicians from punishment if the patient dies. It is not clear whether patients were informed properly or not. Consent for minors was obtained from parents. However, a situation where an adult does not have the capacity to consent, was not clear in these documents. Any sign of free withdrawal of consent was not found in these records. Due to the legal system of Ottoman State, these contracts were related to Islamic law rather than modern civil law. We aim, in this paper, to present a legal practice, which is possible to consider as an early example of the informed consent practice.