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Jewish medicine is medical practice of the
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
people, including writing in the languages of both
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
and
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
. 28% of Nobel Prize winners in medicine have been Jewish, although Jews comprise less than 0.2% of the world's population.


History


Ancient

There are no extant texts of ancient medicine, as a first subject, of Hebrew origin. There was no medicine distinctly Jewish and instead Jewish practitioners had adopted Greek and later Graeco-Roman knowledge as practice. A text known as the "Book of Remedies" is recorded of in the Babylonian
Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the ce ...
twice, and the
baraita ''Baraita'' ( Aramaic: "external" or "outside"; pl. ''Barayata'' or ''Baraitot''; also Baraitha, Beraita; Ashkenazi: Beraisa) designates a tradition in the Jewish oral law not incorporated in the Mishnah. ''Baraita'' thus refers to teachings ...
, apparently dating to at least the reign of
Hezekiah Hezekiah (; hbo, , Ḥīzqīyyahū), or Ezekias); grc, Ἐζεκίας 'Ezekías; la, Ezechias; also transliterated as or ; meaning "Yahweh, Yah shall strengthen" (born , sole ruler ), was the son of Ahaz and the 13th king of Kingdom of Jud ...
. Likewise, a text known as Sefer Refuot, which means "book of remedies", is known, however its composition has been dated roughly to the time of the
Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
anywhere between 1000 and 1700 years after Hezekiah.


Middle Ages

''Further Information:'' ''
Medieval medicine of Western Europe Medieval medicine in Western Europe was composed of a mixture of pseudoscientific ideas from antiquity. In the Early Middle Ages, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, standard medical knowledge was based chiefly upon surviving Greek an ...
'' The Book of Remedies, the earliest medical text written in Hebrew, to
Asaph the Jew Asaph the Jew ( ''Assaf HaYehudi''), also known as Asaph ben Berechiah and Asaph the Physician ( ''Asaph HaRofe'') is a figure mentioned in the ancient Jewish medical text the ''Sefer Refuot'' (lit. “Book of Medicines”). Thought by some to have ...
, dates to the seventh or eighth century. The text comprises four parts; a story of the transmission of medicine from God to mankind, a medical survey, a '' Materia medica'' and a list of medical aphorisms. While there is no knowledge of the writer himself or where the text was written, it circulated widely in Jewish communities during the Medieval period, and it can be assumed that it was of great influence to Jewish practictioners during this time. Though advances were made in gynaecology during the Middle Ages, the texts about gynaecology were written using the masculine form of Hebrew, indicating that gynecological texts were directed towards male doctors, not female
midwives A midwife is a health professional who cares for mothers and newborns around childbirth, a specialization known as midwifery. The education and training for a midwife concentrates extensively on the care of women throughout their lifespan; co ...
. The only mention of midwives in these texts seems to be when direct contact with a woman’s genitalia is necessary; only then do texts specifically mention the women involved in the procedure. In one instance, a text advised the doctor to "order the midwife to massage the orifice of her womb" with the herbs mentioned. Female practitioners contributed significantly both to the practice of medicine inside and outside of Jewish communities, and to the body of medical knowledge in Jewish community and beyond. From the surviving texts, it would seem that the greatest occurrence of female medical practitioners was during the 14th and 15th centuries. While women contributed to the advancement of Jewish medicine during this time, there were still a number of restrictions placed on them by society. No Jew, male or female, was permitted to attend a Christian university. This could be bypassed by taking an examination and acquiring a '' licentia curandi et practicandi'', a license to practice medicine. In at least one case, this examination was specifically directed towards Jews who would work with Christian patients. As a result, the education of these women largely fell to their male relatives. Hava (also known as Hana), a Manoesque woman mentioned for her "medical capacity" in a document dated to the early 1320s, and Virdimura, a Sicilian who obtained her medical license in 1376, were female Jewish practitioners whose direct relatives—Hava's husband and sons, Virdimura's husband—were practitioners as well. Jewish medical practitioners were often educated in Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew, which gave them access to medical texts that were often inaccessible to their Christian counterparts. Working as physicians, surgeons, and midwives, Jewish women were accepted as medical authorities in Paris, Florence, Naples, and Sicily, among other cities. Sara of St. Gilles, for instance, was a Jewish doctor who admitted a male Christian student, Salvetus de Burgonovo, in fourteenth century France. Shatzmiller believes this is enough evidence to indicate that Sara taught female students as well. Mayrona, a Jewish woman from Manoesque, France, is listed in over forty documents from 1342 as a ''phisic''a'','' or a licensed medical practitioner''.'' Jewish midwives made up a larger percentage of practitioners in some regions than their population would suggest. In the French town of
Marseille Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Fra ...
between 1390 and 1415, there are 24 known Jewish practitioners to 18 Christian ones; this is a shift from the period from 1337 to 1362 where Jewish doctors compromised approximately half of all practitioners in Marseille. Jewish practitioners participated in the exchange of knowledge between Christian and Muslim writers and practitioners. The degree to which Jewish women practiced midwifery in the Middle Ages depended largely on the areas in which they lived. In
Iberia The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...
, for instance, Jews were well accustomed to a mix of Muslim, Christian, and their own Jewish culture. Along with this came a shared understanding of medicine; Jews living in this area even wrote medicinal texts in
Judeo-Arabic Judeo-Arabic dialects (, ; ; ) are ethnolects formerly spoken by Jews throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Under the ISO 639 international standard for language codes, Judeo-Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage under the code jrb, enco ...
(Arabic written in Hebrew letters) rather than standard Hebrew or the local vernacular Here, it was commonplace for Jewish midwives to work alongside Christian and Muslim women. However, Jewish women still faced adversity and discrimination on the basis of both their gender and their religion. This is more clearly demonstrated in
Central Europe Central Europe is an area of Europe between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, based on a common historical, social and cultural identity. The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) between Catholicism and Protestantism significantly shaped the a ...
, where it is difficult to determine if Jewish midwives working for non-Jewish patients was common practice or, instead, the exception rather than the rule. In 1403, Floreta d’Ays, a Jewish midwife from Marseilles, was brought to court under charges of malpractice. This is the first such known case brought against a midwife and, according to Monica Green, an unusual case of anti-Jewish sentiment in an otherwise relatively tolerant town. While the end result of the trial is unknown, it's clear that Floreta's non-Christian status played a part in the charges levied against her.


The 17th century

The first organized study of Biblical medicine began during the 17th century.


20th century

The famous doctor of psychiatry
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...
was Jewish by birth. Abraham Maslow was born to Russian Jewish parents during 1908.S D Kunin, JMiles-Watson
Theories of Religion: A Reader
Rutgers University Press, 2006


See also

*
Jewish medical ethics Jewish medical ethics is a modern scholarly and clinical approach to medical ethics that draws upon Jewish thought and teachings. Pioneered by Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits in the 1950s, Jewish medical ethics centers mainly around an applied ethics draw ...


References


External links


hebrew-medical-terms
{{Authority control Hebrew medicine