Rabbis, Doctors and Patients: Conceptions of Medical Expertise and Knowledge in Rabbinic Literature

• In Event: "Everything which heals is not of the ways of the Amorites" – doctors, medicine and healing magic in Talmudic texts and adjacent traditions in Late Antiquity

Abstract

Rabbinic literature describes various legal cases where doctors and other medical practitioners are consulted. These consultations sometimes impact rabbinic legal rulings. For example, famously, in Mishnah Yoma, the question of sick people fasting on Yom Kippur is raised. In the Palestinian and the Babylonian Talmuds, the text describes that doctors are consulted in order to help determine if such a person may eat on the fast day. In the Tosefta and Palestinian and Babylonian Talmud Niddah, doctors are consulted to identify abnormal vaginal secretions. These and other such texts, from the perspective of the history of medicine, are fascinating. Historians of medicine note that in the modern period, perhaps even the early modern periods, due to the institutionalization and professionalization of medicine, the concept of medical expertise was transformed as the doctor-patient relationship became increasingly hierarchical with doctors gaining the authority as experts. Furthermore, the role of the sick person in the doctor-patient relationship slowly disappeared: doctorsbecame less interested in the specific experiences of a sick individual and sought to identify and treat diseases carried by a seemingly abstract and faceless patient. In the premodern era, before this shift, it is important to consider the variety of models for doctor-patient interactions and the diverse types of expertise medical practitioners provided.In late antiquity, with the variety of medical professionals available and varying degrees of professionalization, the possible relationship between doctors and their patients were quite different than those in the modern world. In this paper, focusing on a series of texts from Mishnah, Tosefta, and the Palestinian Talmud Yoma and Niddah, I will examine the relationship between doctors, patients, and rabbis described. I will consider the way in which rabbis imagined the role and expertise of doctors andhow this model fits into understandings of medical expertise in the broader Greco-Roman world of late antiquity. I argue that examining the described rabbinic consultations of doctors provides insight into how rabbinic literature understood knowledge and expertise about the body and health.

Author

• Shulamit Shinnar, Columbia University