The Jews and Medicine Essays

Abstract

THE history of the Jewish physician, his role in the development of medicine, science and general culture and his influence on the fate and history of Jewry have not infrequently been the subject of articles, addresses and small monographs. Most of these tend to degenerate into crowded catalogues of eminent medical men who happened to be Jewish by faith or race. The Jewish physician has always been the child of his own age, and though very often highly original and ingenious, was not a creator or exponent of 'Jewish medicine', and this may explain the shortcomings of some of the historical representations which we possess without invalidating the need for comprehensive biographical studies of Jewish medical and scientific men set against the Jewish and general cultural background of their period. Yet, there certainly is a 'Jewish medicine'—the medicine of the Bible and the Talmud, specifically Jewish in its blending of ritual and hygiene, legal casuistry and medical knowledge. Medicine here emerges as a by-product of the primarily juridical and ritual concerns of the Talmud, and is to a large measure derived from the medical sources and schools of the Greco-Roman culture enveloping Jewish life in Talmudic times in Palestine and elsewhere. Nevertheless it is full of original features which stand out in its best representation, the "Biblical-Talmudic Medicine", by Julius Preuss (1911), to which one example may be added, the original prescription of sweets for 'Bulmus', that is, ravenous hunger due to a hypo-glycæmic condition.

The Jews and Medicine Essays

By Prof. Harry Friedenwald. (Publications of the Institute of the History of Medicine, the Johns Hopkins University, First Series: Monographs, Vols. 2 and 3). Vol. 1. Pp. xxiv + 390 + 9 plates. Vol.2. Pp. ix + 391 + 817 + 3 plates. (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1944.) 2 vols., 50s. net.