field for the sale of traditional medicines in Israel is declining and businesses
have closed and the inventory of medicines has diminished.^80 Their work in
documenting the decline of this sector is a window into the mediaeval world,
using philology, comparisons across Levantine cultures and comparisonswith
Biblical and Talmudic medicine.
If commercial popular medicine is fighting for survival against the
current fads for modern alternative medicines, one Jewish folk remedy still
seems to hold sway. From Talmudic times rabbis such as Rabbi Abba used
chicken soup as a remedy (Figure 11.7).^81 Maimonides stated that chicken
soup is an excellent food suitable for those convalescing from illness and
fattening those who have lost weight due to illness, finding it beneficial for
those with asthma while noting that it helps the chronic fevers that develop
from white bile.82–84Chicken soup is not without its risks: hypernatraemia
and anaphylaxis have been recorded and one child has been recorded as
choking on a chicken bone that lodged in his bronchus while drinking
unstrained chicken soup.85,86Nevertheless, Ohry and Tsafrir,^85 Rosner^86 and
Lieberman^87 all conclude that the medical uses of chicken soup are part of
the armamentarium of successful traditional remedies.312 | Traditional medicineFigure 11.7 A bowl of chicken soup – sometimes called ‘Jewish penicillin’ – is traditionally
served with lokshen(noodles) andkneidlach(matzoh balls). (Courtesy of Marion Woolf.)