CERTIFICATE GRANTED BY HERSCHL PORGES TO SIMON LÖBL ATTESTING TO HIS SKILL AS A BARBER-SURGEON, PRAGUE: 1739

Charter (16 3/8 x 25 1/4 in.; 416 x 640 mm) on parchment; written in calligraphic German square (first paragraph and parts of second) and cursive (most of second paragraph) scripts in brown ink on twenty-six long lines; marks in pencil and pen on verso. First three lines of first paragraph and first line of second paragraph enlarged; enlarged and elaborately decorated initial; filigree pen flourishing in several letters on first line; human face drawn in “o” of Porges; parchment folded over Johann Caspar Artzt’s signature; red wax seal of Johann Caspar Artzt (diameter: 2 3/8 in.; 60 mm) in carved wooden bowl, attached with string of gold and black thread. Dampstaining and scattered staining throughout, at times obscuring text; creased at folds; eight small holes along fold lines, only slightly affecting text; wooden bowl lacking lid and parts of outer rim; gold and black string threadbare in places. Housed in a gray archival cardboard box.

Before Emperor Joseph II’s (1741-1790) famous Edicts of Toleration, Jews living in Prague could not attend Charles University; the number of qualified Jewish doctors in the city was thus extremely small. However, Prague Jews were allowed to train (with other Jews) as barber-surgeons, and a guild for such medical practitioners was set up in the seventeenth century. Around the beginning of the eighteenth century, Charles University started requiring Jewish barber-surgeons to pass an exam before they could practice. The present, elegantly written document certifies that Simon ben Moÿßes Löbl of Holleschau (present-day Holešov, Czech Republic) studied the craft for three years with Herschl Porges, a Faculty of Medicine-examined and -approved barber-surgeon in the Jewish community of Prague, and attests to Löbl’s experience and skill cutting hair, extracting teeth, letting blood, cupping, and treating minor injuries, tumors, and ulcers. It is signed both by Porges and by Johann Caspar Artzt (1688-1765), a notary public active in Prague. Dr. Richard Teltscher (1888-1974) was born in Nikolsburg (present-day Mikulov, Czech Republic) and trained as a lawyer in Vienna before joining the family wine business. Fascinated by the history and culture of Moravian Jewry, he built up an important private collection of Judaica. Some of these items were sent to London, where he spent the war years and lived out the rest of his life.

Literature

Guido Kisch, “Die Prager Universität und die Juden: Mit Beiträgen zur Geschichte des Medizinstudiums,” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Juden in der Čechoslovakischen Republik 6 (1934): 1-144, at pp. 46-47, 103 n. 304.