Medical miscellany, in Hebrew, manuscript on vellum

provenance

From the collection of the Oriental Linguist, Antonio Assemani, a professor of the Archgymnasium of Rome in the first half nineteenth century. He was a member of the prolific academic family of Syriac Maronites of Mount Lebanon, Syria, who distinguished themselves in the eighteenth and nineteenth century as researchers in Oriental languages and manuscript collectors. Given by Assemani to his contemporary Professor Emiliano Sarti, who was also a member of staff in the Archgymnasium of Rome, as well as the Vatican Library and the College di Propaganda Fide: notes on the paper folder. From him to Michele Amari (d. 1899) of Florence, the Orientalist and Italian patriot.

text

This is a substantial fragment of a practical medical miscellany covering the diagnosis and treatment of fevers, headaches and stomach ailments, with some focus on the testing of urine. It was perhaps compiled from the encyclopaedic medical textbook, the 'Canon of Medicine' written by Avicenna in Arabic in the early eleventh century. The 'Canon' was translated into Latin in the twelfth century and into Hebrew in 1279, and served as the chief guide to medical science in the West throughout the medieval and into the early modern period. The Hebrew version was published in 1491 and was the first medical treatise ever to be published in Hebrew.

It is of interest that the present manuscript is in Hebrew. One of the curiosities of the medieval world is that while Jews made up less than 1% of the population of Europe (and perhaps 5-8% of the urban population), they often represented as much as 50% of medical practitioners. The reasons for this are not entirely clear, but it seems that alongside the development of specialised medical professions from the thirteenth century onwards, the Church began to oppose the training of clergy in medicine, and so the role became one in which Jews could excel and succeed in ways forbidden to them in any other calling. Often they brought with them contacts to the Arabic world and the ability to translate the storehouse of medical knowledge that had been amassed there (both translations from Greek scholars such as Galen, as well as scientific advances made in the Islamic world in the interim). With its mix of Muslim and Christian masters, Spain had a commanding position in this process and accordingly had a high percentage of Jewish medical scholars and practitioners. There is a great deal of evidence for individual medical practitioners, such as the great physician and rabbi, Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) who spent the first decades of his life in Cordoba (later holding the office of physician to the Grand Vizier in Egypt), and there is also evidence for the organisation of Hebrew medical schools in Spain in the later Middle Ages: in the mid-fifteenth century Joseph Gallouf Yeshu'ah, a rabbi of Saragossa, is recorded as teaching medicine alongside the Talmud. The present manuscript must be a product of this culture, written by a Jewish medical practitioner as a reference book.