Jewish Appreciation of Fourteenth-Century Scholastic Medicine

The Power of Words, Words with Power. The Assimilation of the Logic by Jewish Intellectuals in Medieval Spain

“…42 Durant le Moyen Âge, l'étude de la logique devint partie intégrante de la formation des médecins, ce qui rend parfaitement compréhensible la difusion de certains textes de logique traduits en hébreu, tant en Aragon qu'en Castille, du fait de la valorisation croissante accordée par les Juifs à la logique scolastique comme moyen d'exercer la médecine, ainsi que comme modèle intellectuel à imiter 43 . Ces traités de médecine promurent sans nul doute l'étude de certains aspects de la logique scolastique, qui à partir du xiv e siècle devint indispensable aux médecins juifs qui avaient intérêt à être reconnus par les autorités chrétiennes 44 .…”

When the Jews Learned Logic from the Pope: Three Medieval Hebrew Translations of theTractatusof Peter of Spain

“…It was noted earlier that the large number of Hebrew versions of the Tractatus is remarkable given the relatively small number of Hebrew translations of scholastic philosophy. Yet since the study of logic was also a part of the training of medieval physicians, the popularity of the Tracatatus among the Jews may be understood in light of the growing Jewish appreciation of scholastic medicine (Garcia-Ballester et al 1990). Many Latin medical works were translated into Hebrew in the late Middle Ages, and this doubtlessly gave rise to the study of some aspects of scholastic logic, which by the fourteenth century was considered necessary for the trained physician.…”

The Construction of a New Form of Learning and Practing Medicine in Medieval Latin Europe

“…In the first place, health became the main objective of medicine and medical practice, or at least such was the program. A system of medicine (not its practice) which was religiously neutral (Garcia-Ballester et al 1990;Temkin 1991, 198). The aspect of health that the physician was expected to be concerned with was that of the body.…”

“…1270], the so-called Lullian medicine, and aspects of the alchemical movement.) Moreover, in their opinion, the route toward proper medical practice did not need to pass through a faculty of medicine, in spite of the fact that the professional model generated by these institutions became the norm, at least in the minds of those who ruled society and dictated its laws (Garcia-Ballester et al 1989;McVaugh 1993), and even though this scholastic model and the new healer who emerged from it continued to hold a certain fascination, at least for Jewish physicians living in southern Europe throughout the fourteenth century (Garcia-Ballester et al 1990).…”

“…Thus Galen, in medieval eyes (whether Christian, Muslim, or Jewish), was the be all and end all of Greek medical knowledge and medical knowledge in general. Nevertheless, the achievements of the medieval Latin West went beyond this, for it added, among other things, the following: a new type of relationship between religious knowledge, acquired through faith (fide tantum), and human reasoning (ratione), acquired by means of such secular sciences as arithmetic, geometry, and natural philosophy in general -a point that was borrowed from Arab intellectuals (Jolivet 1988,142;Sabra 1987); the development of a method of inquiry and communication (the lectio-questio-disputatio combination) (Siraisi 1981;Jacquart 1985a;Garcia-Ballester et al 1990); the in-depth study of basic questions concerning the structure of matter (e.g., on the theory of the elements); 2 a new system for the transmission of knowledge (the university) (de Ridder-Symoens 1992); a system of medical care linked to the university system and controlled by the civil power (Garcia-Ballester 1994a, 6-8); and an employment market that guaranteed a connection between the world of knowledge (theoria-practica) and that of practice (operatio) (Garcia-Ballester 1994b;McVaugh 1993). This process reached maturity, or at least began to do so, in the thirteenth century.…”