Medical Treatise

Solomon Ibn Abūn’s Hebrew medical work, the title of which is not known, offers a review of physiological and biological knowledge of his period. In this excerpt, Solomon attempts to explain the ability of the brain to recognize different individuals, which depends on “storehouses” in the brain. Solomon combines fields that are today treated as distinct: physiology and psychology. Solomon describes the brain as a “great fountain and spring,” one that provides water to the rest of the body by way of the spinal cord. This idea appears in other northern French medical works, especially The Book of the Responses of the Uncle and the Nephew by Berekhiah ha-Nakdan.