Traditional Jewish medicine | 297crocodile, they feature much less in lists of Jewish practical pharmacy. This
is thought to be less due to commercial availabilitythan to halachic consid-
erations.^9
The medication mentioned in the Talmud is derived mainly from plants
and trees. Often the trees are used in their entirety, while sometimes just the
leaves and rarely the bark are used. Plant oils were popular and olive oil
might be used as a gargle for sore throat. The most important animal
product is honey: ‘with sweet a person heals the bitter.’^10 Drugs might
be prepared in different ways. Mostly the drugs were cooked individually
or together – a liquid remedy called shikyana. Sometimes drugs were
pulverised and taken internally either as dry powder or suspended in water.
Samma de naftza,an abortifacient remedy, was imbibed in this way.^11 Wa x
and base tallow were used as the base for salves. One such, collyria, was
used for eye disease. Salves could also form the basis of poultices and
plasters. Plaster, retiya,may be applied to a wound, or if the whole body is
injured as in a fall then the whole body is covered with a plaster, one of the
ingredients of which is wheat. Theriac, a great compound medication with
a variety of often potent ingredients, such as snake flesh, was widely
employed in Talmudic times. The rabbis counsel against the use of theriac
from heathen sources because of the risk of adulteration with poisons.^12
Other products used for treatment include many common foodstuffs.
Bread soaked in wine is recommended as an eye compress and green leaves
may be applied to inflamed eyes.^13 Ripe or unripe gourds can be placed on
the forehead to relieve fever.^14 Mar Samuel (c.165–c.257), a leading scholar
and physician of the Talmudic period, considered that cool water for eye
compresses is the best collyrium in the world and children were bathed in
wine for healing purposes^15 (Tosefta Shabbat 12:13). The use of natural
springs and waters was also well known – and the springs of Tiberias, on
the shore of the Sea of Galilee, were particularly prized for their healing
properties. Rabbi Yochanan explains that the absence of tzaraat, leprosy, in
Babylon was because of their bathing in the Euphrates.^16
In addition to the use of specific medications the Talmudic records, addi-
tional details would seem to add a magical dimension to the treatment. The
use of garland, or knotted plants, is said to be especially efficacious – three
knots arrest the illness, five heal it and seven help even against magic.^17 A
particularly efficacious medication was said to be samtar. If this is placed on
a wound caused by an arrow or spear it would help the victim survive.^18 If
someone is bitten by a rabid dog they would be given liver from that animal
to eat.^19
There is little in the way of so-called filth pharmacyin the Talmud, which
appears extensively in Greek and Roman sources. In the Talmud Rabbi
Chanina records the use of a measure of 40-day-old urine for a wasp sting
or scorpion bite – presumably this was to be applied externally.^20 In the