The Medical Handbook

The seventh chapter of b. Gittin contains an abbreviated medical handbook—organized from head to foot—and forms one of the longest clusters of recipes in the entire talmudic corpus. (Tractates b. Shabbat and b. Avodah Zarah also contain anthologies of recipes and medical discussions.) Like late antique books of pharmacopoeia (lit., “drug-making”) and euporista (lit., “easily procurable remedies”), b. Gittin lists therapies, often with multiple alternatives, for diseases affecting various parts of the body. Each entry is introduced by the prefixed preposition “for” (Aramaic, l-), and alternative recipes are introduced by the phrase “if not” (Aramaic, ’iy lo’).

Toward the end of the same chapter of b. Gittin, one finds detailed advice for achieving a healthy lifestyle. This includes information about toilet and bathing practices, general hygiene (with an emphasis on beneficial and harmful food), drinks, and correct patterns of behavior—especially regarding eating, bathing, being healed, and having intercourse. Talmudic knowledge of human anatomy and physiology focuses in many instances on the reproductive organs and relevant processes (e.g., conception, gestation, pregnancy, nursing). Because disciplinary boundaries were relatively fluid in ancient sciences, these rabbinic medical discussions sometimes engage with other fields of knowledge, such as botany, teratology, physiognomy, magic, and astrology (e.g., indicating the right time for bloodletting).