The Jewish Doctor: A Narrative History - Hardcover

Nevins, Michael

9781568215334: The Jewish Doctor: A Narrative History

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1568215339 ISBN 13: 9781568215334

Publisher: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1996

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.

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From Publishers Weekly:

Why do so many Jews, out of proportion to their numbers in the general population, become physicians? In this well-researched study, Nevins answers that question by positing a definite connection between Judaism and medicine, contending first of all that Judaism itself has always been concerned with health. Both the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud are replete with maxims related to the subject, some anachronistic, some timeless; and many early Jewish physicians, such as Moses Maimonides, were also rabbis. In what is really a series of interlocking essays, Nevins chronicles the history of the Jewish doctor by studying the lives of individual physicians, each in his or her own time. In doing so, he puts Jewish doctors in historical context (there were times when they were valued highly and other times when Jews were forbidden to study or practice the profession). Conversely, as Nevins demonstrates, Jewish doctors have also heavily influenced history, most significantly through their scientific contributions to the field. The result is an intriguing analysis of a very interesting topic.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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