We have seen the reference to the healing of King Hezekiah. However,
one of Hezekiah’s acts, for which he was praised by the rabbis, was to
conceal the legendary Book of Remedieswhich was said to have contained
the cures for all diseases and the authorship of which was attributed to King
Solomon by the great mediaeval rabbi–physician Nachmanides, Ramban,
(1194–c.1270). The Biblical commentator Rashi (1040–1105) believed that
people were being healed so quickly by these remedies that they did not
develop the humility that their illness should have produced, and so they
failed to see God as the true Healer.^5 Maimonides, however, commented
that the Book of Remedies contained treatments based on astrological
phenomena and magical incantations, which might lead people to use them
for idolatrous purposes. Further, it contained details of the formulae for
poisons and antidotes, and this might have led unscrupulous people to use
the poisons to kill their enemies.
Medicine in the Talmud
The nature of the Talmud, with its encyclopaedic view of the Jewish world
spanning many centuries of Jewish life in both the land of Israel and the
Babylonian diaspora, lent itself to coverage of a wide variety of traditional
medical themes, including folk remedies and health beliefs. The Talmud
builds on the range of medicinal products and hygienic procedures in the
Bible supplemented by oral traditions, some said to have been preserved
from the time of Moses. In addition, the Talmud contains a large number of
medical references dealing with the rights and duties of the physician. From
Talmudic times it was recommended that no wise person should live in a
town that did not have a doctor. It was required for a patient to seek help
for healing even on the Sabbath when religious restrictions might be set
aside if there is any possible danger to health.
Some of the popular medicine traditions recorded in the Talmud will
naturally seem strange, even outlandish, to the modern mind but we should
remember that in mediaeval Europe as late as the sixteenth century the
apothecary was legally required to keep woodlice, ants, vipers, scorpions,
crabs, sparrow brains and fox lungs in stock.^6 Leading rabbis of the
Talmudic period, such as Abbaye and Raba, did have concerns about the use
of magic and charms but, mindful of contemporary sentiment, accepted that
whatever is done for therapeutic purposes is not to be regarded as supersti-
tious.^7 Further, given the strictness of Jewish dietary laws and their proscrip-
tion of certain animals and birds for food, they record cases of permitted
and forbidden treatments.^8 The use of forbidden animal products for
medication remained a problem for observant Jews. Although the theoretical
lists of available Jewish traditional remedies and materia medica contain
many products from such animals as the eagle, lion, frog, hyena and
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