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German Medicine, Folklore and Language in Popular Medical Practices of the Eastern European Jews (Nineteenth to Twentieth Century)

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Jewish Medicine and Healthcare in Central Eastern Europe

Part of the book series: Religion, Spirituality and Health: A Social Scientific Approach ((RELSPHE,volume 3))

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Abstract

Medical customs of the Yiddish-speaking Jewish communities in Eastern Europe consisted of various elements, only some of which, mainly those associated with the Rabbinic tradition, could be described as idiosyncratic. Ashkenazi folk medicine was a complex heterogeneous system, to a large extent dependent on its social, geographic and historical milieu. It interacted with other systems: the official medicine and local folklore(s). In the following article several examples of German influences on the Jewish folk medicine will be indicated, as they appear in the sources written or published in the Russian Empire and Galicia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its intention is not only to present the visible impact of such works as Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland’s Makrobiotik oder die Kunst, das menschliche Leben zu verlängern or Heinrich Paulizky’s Anleitungen für Landleute zu einer vernünftigen Gesundheitspflege, and not only to enumerate excerpts from the early modern German-Yiddish medical literature, but also to shed some new light on the presence of such influences in the Yiddish folklore.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    On the history of Jewish ethnography in Eastern Europe see: Gottesman 2003.

  2. 2.

    Bamberger’s and Duchek’s medical advice may be found in Sperling’s Hebrew edition of his second volume.

  3. 3.

    “He was the neighbourhood pharmacist, which practically made him a doctor, which was as far as one’s imagination could stretch. Unless it was to a “professor”. In dire medical cases, the victim was sometimes operated on by a “professor” – a sign of both privilege and despair” (Gay 2001, p. 50).

  4. 4.

    Despite the obvious limitations, the sources also provide evidence that Jews consulted books in non-Jewish languages, e.g. Russian, Polish or German.

  5. 5.

    The initial chapters were published under the title Moda le-Bina (Announcer of Wisdom) in Berlin in 1789.

  6. 6.

    The booklet reached many representatives of the Jewish community; it was quoted, inter alia, by the author of the collection of segulot titled Mare ha-Yeladim (View on Children, Jerusalem 1900).

  7. 7.

    Imrei Israel (Words of Israel) is a very interesting example of a publication which combined the advice of folk medicine, which did not fail to refer to magical activities, with modern medicine. Both categories of advice were arranged in neighbouring columns, whereby the natural-modern part is filled mainly by quotations from Marpe le-Am (Medicine for People).

  8. 8.

    Many excerpts from Marpe le-Am are featured in the London manuscript MS 9862 from the collection of The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

  9. 9.

    Vide Rozowski 1947, p. 18.

  10. 10.

    i.e. the periodical Der Yidisher Hoyz-Doktor (The Jewish House Doctor) which was published as a supplement to the Warsaw daily Haynt (1912–1914).

  11. 11.

    The Yiddish edition bore the title: Der Arumgang un Flege fun a Zoygkind (Preparing and Feeding an Infant, 1926).

  12. 12.

    The popularity of Hebrew translations of Hufeland’s works is not the only instance in which the traditional communities consulted these Enlightenment publications which described the world of nature. Among others, Reshit Limudim of Baruch Lindau (Berlin 1788) was a work based to a great extent on a German textbook entitled Naturgeschichte für Kinder (Göttingen 1778). Vide Kogman 2009.

  13. 13.

    The reprint bore the title Refuot u-segulot (Medicines and Remedies, Prague 1694), vide Heller 2011, p. 745.

  14. 14.

    For more information about the author and his work see: Schipper 1930; Sadowski 2011.

  15. 15.

    Moses Marcuse derisively remarked that the Jewish barbers in the republic do not study medicine: only “one or two of them got a smattering of Ma’ase Tuviya” (Marcuse 1790, p. 82a).

  16. 16.

    Vide Ettmüller 1682a, b.

  17. 17.

    For information about the elements of shamanism in the baalei shem practices see: Rosman 1996, pp. 13–19.

  18. 18.

    See the chapter devoted to the baalei shem and their works in: Etkes 2005, pp. 7–45.

  19. 19.

    The majority of the re-published works appeared in the Polish lands. See also the tables in the appendices to Matras 1997.

  20. 20.

    Inter alia in the article entitled O lecznictwie i przesądach leczniczych ludu żydowskiego which appeared in issue No. 48 of “Izraelita” of 1898 (p. 505). In the footnotes the author included the transcription of titles, which shows influences of the Ashkenazi pronunciation: Tołdos-odom and Mifałos-elokim.

  21. 21.

    Geschoss in Hoffmann-Krayer and Bächtold-Stäubli 1974, p. 756.

  22. 22.

    Hexenschusz, in: Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm, http://www.woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB?lemma=hexenschusz [24 August, 2016].

  23. 23.

    See: Kuchen, Kuche in: Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm, http://woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB/?sigle=DWB&mode=Vernetzung&lemid=GK15294#XGK15294 [24 August, 2016].

  24. 24.

    See Chotsh 1703, p. 11.

  25. 25.

    MS 9862, pp. 42–44. See a similar incantation in Yiddish which also referred to a woman and was uttered while holding a hand on the omphalos of the sick woman in: Goldberg, Eisenberg 1880/1881, p. 2a. However, it is marked by a peculiar fragment “do not drink her blood, do not break her bones, do not stab her sides, do not weaken her members”. On the same page there is also another incantation referring to the womb, which entreated the sickness by: “three Patriarchs and three Matriarchs, the seven seraphim, the seven heavens, the seven shofarot, the sun and the moon with seven planets and the Name of God”.

  26. 26.

    Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm, http://woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB/?sigle=DWB&mode=Vernetzung&lemid=GB00933#XGB00933 [24 August, 2016].

  27. 27.

    The word miteser was translated as “table companion” (Lilientalowa 2007, p. 68).

  28. 28.

    Information about it appears in the legal interpretation of rabbi Samuel ben Fayvush of Przemyśl (16th/17th c.), Teshuvot ha-gaon rabi Shmuel mi-Premesla (Responses of the Gaon Rabbi Samuel of Przemysl) In: Piskei ve-shelot ve-teshuvot Maharash mi-Lublin (Decisions, Questions and Responses of Mahrash of Lublin), p. 254.

  29. 29.

    Cf. Grimm 1854, p. 1111.

  30. 30.

    Lat. Mola hydatidosa, vide Bandtkie 1827, p. 498.

  31. 31.

    See a different incantation related with the disease known as waser man, along with the magic activities (pouring water into a bucket, inserting a “ring without a stone” into the said bucket”) in: Chotsh 1703, p. 8.

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  1. Institute of Jewish Studies, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

    Marek Tuszewicki

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  1. Department of Social Sciences, Poznan University of Medical Sciences, Poznan, Poland

    Marcin Moskalewicz (Editor-in-Chief) (Editor-in-Chief)

  2. The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Marcin Moskalewicz (Editor-in-Chief) (Editor-in-Chief)

  3. Res Publica Foundation, Warsaw, Poland

    Marcin Moskalewicz (Editor-in-Chief) (Editor-in-Chief)

  4. Department of Historical Sciences, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Ute Caumanns

  5. Institute for the History of Medicine and Medical Ethics, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany

    Fritz Dross

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Tuszewicki, M. (2019). German Medicine, Folklore and Language in Popular Medical Practices of the Eastern European Jews (Nineteenth to Twentieth Century). In: Moskalewicz, M., Caumanns, U., Dross, F. (eds) Jewish Medicine and Healthcare in Central Eastern Europe. Religion, Spirituality and Health: A Social Scientific Approach, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92480-9_5

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