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The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook Advance Access originally published online on June 26, 2009
The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 2009 54(1):59-91; doi:10.1093/lbyb/ybp002
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© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Leo Baeck Institute. All rights reserved. For permissions please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

"Our hearts and spirits were broken": The medical world from the perspective of German-Jewish patients in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries*

Nimrod Zinger

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In his autobiography entitled Megilat Sefer, the renowned rabbi Yaakov Emden (1697–1776) recounts how he and his family became very ill in the year 1743.1 The news of Emden's condition spread quickly and many members of the Hamburg, Altona and Wandsbek Jewish communities prayed and gave alms for his recovery. At one point Emden took a certain medication to cause perspiration but it was so strong that the rabbi described its unfortunate effect, "I perspired so effusively that I became extremely weak; I almost breathed my last and could barely move. Those who stood near me became exceedingly worried ...".2 In an act of desperation, Emden's physician administered to him a large spoonful of wine, which caused him to recover quickly: "I revived almost immediately; my recovery was a miracle to everyone who saw or heard about me—almost resurrection of the dead. Blessed be He who resurrects the dead . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   SELF-TREATMENT
 

   MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE AND BODILY PERCEPTION
 

   THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE PATIENT AND THE HEALER
 

   "SOCIAL HEALERS"
 

   CHOICES
 

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