Bone Tuberculosis and the Aesthetics of Decay: Architectural Rot and Embodied Regeneration in Peyami Safa’s Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu

This study reads Peyami Safa’s Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu (Ninth Surgical Ward) as an architectural and phenomenological illness narrative that reveals how built environments shape embodied experiences of sickness. Through the perspective of an adolescent bone-tubercular patient moving between hospital corridors, decaying wooden houses, and an elite köşk, the novel articulates what I call ecologies of rot—the material and affective entanglements between vulnerable bodies and vulnerable architecture. Drawing on medical humanities, sensory studies, and health and environmental humanities, I demonstrate that the protagonist finds coherence in spaces marked by decay while experiencing misattunement in refined, “ideal” settings. The novel thereby challenges universal notions of “healing environments,” anticipating current debates in healthcare design. I propose that flexible, adaptable spaces—those allowing forms of environmental autonomy—offer a more responsive architecture of care, attentive to the shifting sensory and emotional needs of their occupants. Keywords: Rot, decay, regeneration, illness narrative, health and environmental humanities, flexible design