THEIR POSITION IN MEDICAL SCIENCE.
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.--A CHANGE IN THE FORTUNES OF THE JEWS AND
MOORS.--AN EXAMINATION INTO THEIR GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS.--THEIR SKILL
IN MEDICAL SCIENCE.--MIRACLE CURE BY CHRISTIAN CLERGY.--JEWISH
BODY PHYSICIANS HIGHLY PRIZED AND MUCH SOUGHT.--PROMINENT
MEDICAL SCHOOLS AND EMINENT PHYSICIANS.--RASHI.--IBN EZRA.--IBN
TIBBON.--MAIMONIDES.--AVENZOAR AVACENNA.
We have witnessed the rise of Islam. We accompanied the Arab on
his march of conquest. Breathlessly we stood upon the banks of the
Guadalete and awaited the issue of a battle upon which the destiny
of nations depended. We followed the triumphal processions of the
Arab-Moors into Spain, and our eyes and hearts never ceased rejoicing
over the manifold beauties and wonders which Moorish skill spread
o'er fair Andalusia, and our tongues ne'er tired speaking of the
manifold blessings which Moorish social and domestic and political
life and religious tolerance showered lavishly not only upon their own
generation, but upon all the generations that have been ever since.
And there was another picture, not so beautiful, but far more
instructive; not so cheering, but fuller of pathos. Tearfully we
witnessed the siege of Jerusalem and its unparalleled massacre.
Heartbroken we followed the despised and spurned and abused, the
friendless and homeless Jew, in his vain efforts to find a spot where
he might rest his weary head in peace. Our hearts leaped for joy when
we beheld the followers of Mohammed--not the followers of the founder
of the religion of love--not only restore to the Jew human rights
unjustly torn from him, but also offer him the hand of brotherhood.
When we parted last we left the Jew and Moor busily engaged in making
fair Andalusia, in culture and art and intelligence, the mistress of
the world. Then all was peace and joy and sunshine.
We have returned. Five centuries have passed since our last visit.
We are now at the end of the fifteenth century. A mighty change has
taken place. Peace has turned to war, joy to sorrow, sunshine to
darkness. Culture wears the crown of thorns. Art is dragged through
the mire. Science is fettered hand and foot. Religious liberty sends
forth piteous shrieks from the flames and smoke of the auto-da-fe.
Enlightened Europe weeps and trembles. We ask Mercy: "Why weepest
thou?" And she sobs forth the name: "Cardinal Ximenes." We ask Art the
same question, and she stammers forth: "The Church." Science answers:
"The Inquisition." Religious Liberty utters between its death throes
the name: "Torquemada." Enlightened Europe weeps and trembles, because
the vast storehouses of learning, which Moorish and Jewish intelligence
had built up, are about to be consigned to the flames, and the builders
themselves are to be extirpated from the soil, upon which they have
lived nigh unto eight centuries, and which their own diligent toil has
made the wonder of Europe.
"Haste ye," the Spirit of knowledge calleth unto us, "the furnaces are
heated, the death-pyres are awaiting impatiently their martyrs, the
ships are ready in the harbor to carry off, and give abundance of water
to all such who refused the few drops of the water of salvation, the
massive gates of the Inquisition dungeons are open, and the instruments
of torture are eager for their cruel and inhuman work of death. Haste
ye, the moments are precious, gather the knowledge for which you have
come, as speedily as you can; tarry, and not a trace nor a record will
remain of this most wondrous and fruitful era of Europe's intellectual
advance."
Let us heed the warning, and hasten to our task. We had come prepared
for a detailed account, but now we must content ourselves with a
mere synoptical sketch of the progress made by the Arabs and Jews in
literature, art, philosophy and in the mathematical and physical and
applied sciences, during the same era when the rest of Europe was yet
lying in comparative darkness and barbarism.
A feeling of awe comes over us as we approach our task. We cannot but
feel that in dealing with the Arab and Jew in Europe, the period that
extends from the beginning of the eighth to the end of the fifteenth
century, we are dealing with a divine agency, sent into Europe to
rekindle and keep alive the sacred fire of intelligence, which, prior
to their coming, had been extinguished by the church and by barbarian
conquerors. At this era they are the sole depositories of learning. The
second and third chapters of this narrative have acquainted us with the
terrible stifling mist of ignorance and its concomitants, fanaticism
and cruelty and corruption and intense suffering, which hovered over
Europe at the time when the people of the Orient had entered it, and
began their intellectual unfolding.
In the East those centers of learning that had not yet passed away were
rapidly declining. Antioch, Alexandria, Bagdad, Damascus, Jerusalem,
these cities which in their day had made the light of the East more
luminous with their light, had drawn in their rays and sent them forth
no more. But the Jew and Arab had wandered into Europe before this
intellectual decline, and there they fanned the spark of knowledge
they had brought with them into such a brilliant and active life, that
its light still illumines our mind, and its genial warmth still cheers
our heart. The Jew and the Moor have made Europe their everlasting
debtor for their services in bridging the yawning chasm which separates
ancient from modern culture. With them, most of that ancient knowledge,
for which mankind had toiled diligently and untiringly for thousands of
years, would have been lost, and lost forever, and modern knowledge,
would have been compelled to begin again at the very alphabet, and we
to-day might have been some 2,000 or 3,000 years behind. Without their
untiring efforts to disperse the poisonous mists, and force their light
upon the people, even at the expense of much suffering, the darkest,
and most slothful period of European annals which was co-eval with the
highest Jewish and Moorish intelligence before that intelligence made
itself felt in Europe, might have still surrounded us to-day.
But this is not the time for reflection nor laudation. Hark! Already
the doleful knell is tolling, and the people are thronging the public
square, and the clergy are chanting hymns of victory and imprecatory
formula, and the _autos-da-fe_ are piled up high and dry, and the
condemned are impatient, for they long for death, they pray to be
released, at last, from the insufferable tortures of the Inquisition,
and so we must hasten to our task of recording upon History's pages the
wonderful strides the Jews and Moors did make in science and literature
and philosophy, before flame and sword and rack and expulsion, silence
their voice and obliterate their works forever.
We shall consider their intellectual labors in the order of their
importance and service to human-kind, and for that reason we shall
begin with a hasty review of their progress in medical science. In this
branch the Jew was without peer. He excelled the Moor, because the
restrictions which Islamism imposed upon the follower of the Koran,
such as prohibitions against dissecting man or animal, did not trammel
him. And he eclipsed the Christian, for the Church held medical
science accursed, branded and condemned the physician as an atheist,
and zealously propagated the doctrines that cures must be wrought by
relics of martyrs and bones of saints; by prayer and intercession;
that each region of the body was under special spiritual charge, the
first joint of the right thumb being in care of God the father, the
second under that of the blessed Virgin, and so on to the other parts.
For each disease there was a saint. A man with sore eyes must invoke
St. Clara. St. Anthony is a sure cure for other inflammations, St.
Pernel delivers from ague. In all cases, cured or not, the clergy
constituted themselves as the self-appointed agents for collecting the
fees for the saints, and as long as this spiritual method of curing
disease formed one of their most productive sources of gain, they
took great care that no other mode of treatment should excel theirs.
Hence their attitude against physicians, and their frequent council
decrees, making it a crime punishable with death for a Jewish physician
to attend a Christian patient, and for a Christian patient to seek
recourse to a Jewish physician, instead of to the shrines and altars
of the saints.[19] But for all that, Jewish physicians, and Jewish
medical schools flourished, and found their prohibited profession very
profitable among the Christians, especially among kings, and popes, and
princes, and bishops, among the very men, who passed the sentence of
death for crimes which they were the first to perpetrate.
[19] Council of Beziers, 1246 A. C.; Council of Alby, 1254:
Faculty of Paris, 1301.
In the tenth and eleventh and twelfth centuries, nearly all the
physicians in Europe were Jews. Later, the Moors joined them, but only
for a short time, and then the Jews again became the sole champions of
medical science. There was not a man of power or prominence who had not
his own Jewish body physician, and these body physicians constituted a
power, for besides holding the lives of potentates in their hand, they
combined with their professional skill, all the learning of the age,
a profound knowledge of theology, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy,
music, law, statesmanship, poetry, lexicography, criticism, and of
other branches.
In naming them and their schools and their works we must give honorable
mention to the Jewish physicians of France. Out of the Spanish
peninsula there had came across the Pyrenees an intellectual influence
which found a warm reception by the Jews of France. To verify this, of
schools, we need but name the famous medical school at Narbonne under
the presidency of Rabbi Abbu, and the flourishing school at Arles, and
the most famous of them all, the college of Montpellier, with the great
Profatius as regent of the faculty, as distinguished in medicine as he
was eminent in astronomy; and of the distinguished Jewish physician of
France, we need but name Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, (1040-1105) better
known under the abbreviation: "Rashi," the greatest French physician
of the eleventh century, unrivaled in his age for his instructions
in great surgical operations, as the Cæsarean section; nor must we
forget the learned Ibn Tibbon, (1160-1230) who emphasized the necessity
of a close study of botany for medical purposes, and of carefully
cultivating the art of preparing drugs.
The scope of this discourse will not permit us to name all of the
distinguished Jewish physicians of Spain, nor to enumerate their works
nor to dwell upon their merits. From the many we shall select the name
of Ibn Ezra, (1093-1107) the polyhistor of his age. His chief work is
a treatise on practical and theoretical medicine, entitled, "Book of
Proofs."
But greater than Ibn Ezra, both as a physician and a philosopher, is
Moses Maimonides, (1135-1204), honored by his countrymen with the
titles: "The Doctor," "The Great Sage," "The Glory of the West," "The
Light of the East, Second Only to Moses." He was the most famous of
all living physicians of his time. He was coveted as body physician
by the greatest potentates, and the justly celebrated Sultan Saladin
considered himself honored and fortunate to secure him as his body
physician. When Richard Coeur de Lion, King of England, fell sick,
Moses Maimonides was summoned for consultation. His contributions to
medical works are many. He wrote medical aphorisms derived from former
Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic sources; an abridgment of Galen, a
treatise on "Hemorrhoids," on "Poisons and Antidotes," on "Asthma," on
"The Preservation of Health," on "The Bites of Venomous Animals," and
other valuable works.[20]
[20] For details see, Graetz's "Geschichte der Juden," volume
5 and 6; Jost's "Geschichte des Judenthums," volume 2 and 3,
chapters xxiv-xxvii; Drapers' Intellectual Development of
Europe, volume 2, chapter iv.
We return to the Moors, and here, too, we are confronted by an
abundance of medical literature. Over 300 distinguished medical
writers are mentioned, and their works are voluminous. Chief among
them stands Avenzoar, Ibn Zohr, (beginning of the Twelfth century)
physician, to the court of Seville. His famous work "Canon of
Medicine," an encyclopedia of medical knowledge, established for him
a world wide reputation and became the medical authority for European
universities for many centuries. Upwards of 100 other medical treaties
are ascribed to him, some are tracts of a few pages, others are works
extending through several volumes. Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980-1037)
occupies an honored place next to him. Chief among his works is his
"Method of Preparing Medicine and Diet," "Treatment of Leprosy,"
and two works on "Fever," in which he continues the work begun a
century before by the Jewish physician, Isaac ben Suleiman Israeli.
The Moors themselves acknowledge that the Jews far surpass them in
their knowledge of anatomy, physiology and hygiene, that from want
of knowledge of the construction of the human body, their surgery
is necessarily crude. Their great fame, however, rests, and will
rest, upon their introduction of pharmacy, their therapeutical use
of drugs, their making chemistry, the handmaid of medical treatment.
Pharmacopoeia dates from this period. The Moors of Spain, opened the
first apothecary shops, and many of the names and many of the medicines
still used, have come down to us from their period.[21] We must content
ourselves with this brief review (more the scope of this work will not
permit,) of "The Position of the Jew and the Moor in Medical Science."
[21] For full information consult "History of Medicine,"
by J. F. Payne; "Geschichte der Arabischen Aerzte und
Naturforscher," by Wustenfeld.
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