attached to the concept of an ‘occult virtue’ which was inherent in a
particular object. Nachmanides believed that King Solomon had gained all
the appropriate knowledge in this area from the Torah – ‘even the potency
of herbs and their segulot’. Rabbi Bayha ben Asher (died 1340) believed that
God had taught Moses the nature and occult virtue of plants and herbs that
had the power to heal but could also ‘sweeten the bitter and make the bitter
sweet’.
The principles of ‘sympathy’, where the effect resembles the cause, and
‘contact’, where objects that have been in contact continue to act on each
other after the contact has ended, can also be found in the Jewish sources.
Accordingly, we find such remedies as rubbing a stillborn baby with its
placenta or eating the liver of a mad dog as a cure for the dog’s bite. Sympathy
was even extended to looking at specific colours to influence the red or black
humours or trying to destroy an enemy by destroying his image. As for
contact, it was believed that anyone who got possession of someone’s cut hair
or nail clippings could assume power over them. The name given to a person
gives them some of the character of its original owner. Rabbi Jacob Emden
(1697–1776) referred to a drug that heals sword wounds when the drug is in
contact with the blood on the sword, even if the wounded person is now some
distance away. The noted physician Tobias Hacohen (1652–1729) reported
cases of family illness where brothers, even those living in different countries,
developed the same illness or died at the same time.
The principle of antipathy was the basis for the use of amulets. Thus the
supposed antipathy between deer and snakes led to people wearing the
tooth of a deer to keep snakes away. Maimonides was careful to avoid
magical treatments unless there was evidence as to their efficacy and claims
for their benefit could be proved, or if withholding them would cause
psychological distress to the patient. Rabbi Samson Morpurgo (died 1740)
noted the principle of sympathy as well as the working of specific remedies.
He also noted that other ‘remedies’, whether of vegetable or animal origin,
were hung on the neck or arm of the patient, who had fever, jaundice,
epilepsy or dysentery, and these were to be considered segulot because
doctors were aware that they were not conventional treatment. However,
Morpurgo made a specific case for the use of snake products, found in the
medication known as theriac, because doctors had indicated that it could be
prescribed for disorders of the white humour and thus did not work by
occult virtue alone. In general, however, the consumption of many of the
noxious medicaments was not recommended for Jewish patients and there
was a particular revulsion to the use of blood and products of vermin and
reptiles.^57
There is a wide variety of treatments recorded within the rabbinic
Responsa. Among the popular prescriptions are many items that owe
their place to tradition and long established associations such as cutting the
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