The Jewish Doctor A Narrative History

by Nevins, Michael

• ISBN13: 9781568215334
• ISBN10: 1568215339
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-05-01
• Publisher: Jason Aronson, Inc.

Summary

The Jewish Doctor: A Narrative History focuses on medical practitioners in the context of their time, their work, exploits and discoveries, and the relationships they shared with their patients and communities.
During the ninth through eleventh centuries, Jewish doctors were esteemed translators and transmitters of classical Greek medicine. In medieval and Renaissance Europe, even as laws were passed restricting their capacity to practice, Jewish court physicians were sought after by monarchs and popes who valued their services. After the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, when Jews were increasingly granted civil rights and educational opportunities, they used the medical profession as a means of upward social mobility or of escape to physical and intellectual freedom.
Contributions by Jewish scientists in this century are often taken for granted, though they have been exceptional. Despite the fact that the Jewish people make up less than 1 percent of the world's population, nearly one-quarter of Nobel Prize winners in medicine and physiology have been Jewish. Jewish physicians helped to make German medicine preeminent during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and were major contributors to the development of science in the United States in the modern era.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
An Historical Perspective	p. 1
Early Jewish Opinions of Physicians	p. 13
Medical Oaths and Aphorisms	p. 17
Maimonides, "The Eagle of Physicians"	p. 23
The Perils of Court Life	p. 31
Black Bile and Black Death in Renaissance Italy	p. 37
Padua's Unique Influence	p. 43
Defensive Medicine	p. 51
Portuguese Migrants	p. 55
Eighteenth-Century Medical Vignettes	p. 61
Who Really Wrote "Maimonides' Prayer"?	p. 67
The Late Entry of Russian Physicians	p. 71
"My Son the Feldsher"	p. 79
Shtetl Medicine	p. 83
The Lower East Side	p. 91
A G.P. Remembers	p. 95
Women in Medical Practice	p. 99
Racism and Jewish Health	p. 103
Polish Hospitals and the Holocaust	p. 111
Academic Intolerance in America	p. 115
The Jewish Doctor in Literature	p. 119
Conclusion	p. 125
Epilogue: Bagels and Bankes	p. 129
Notes	p. 131
Select Bibliography	p. 147
Index	p. 151
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