Jewish Medicine and Healthcare in Central Eastern Europe: Shared Identities, Entangled Histories

Description

Is ‘Jewish medicine’ a valid historical category? Does it represent a collective constituted by the interplay of medical, ethnic and religious cultures? Integrating academic disciplines from medical history to philology and Jewish studies, this book aims at answering this question historically by presenting comprehensive coverage of Jewish medical traditions in Central Eastern Europe, mostly on what is today Poland and Germany (and the former Russian, Prussian and Austro-Hungarian Empires). In this significant zone of ethnic, religious and cultural interaction, Jewish, Polish, and German traditions and communities were more entangled, and identities were shared to an extent greater than anywhere else. Starting with early modern times and the Enlightenment, through the 19th century, up until the horrors of medicine in the ghettos and concentration camps, the book collects a variety of perspectives on the question of how Judaism and Jewish culture were dynamically related to medicine and healthcare. It discusses the Halachic traditions, hygiene-related stereotypes, the organization of healthcare within specified communities, academic careers, hybrid medical identities, and diversified medical practices. Front Matter ....Pages i-x Jewish– German– Polish: Histories and Traditions in Medical Culture (Marcin Moskalewicz, Ute Caumanns, Fritz Dross)....Pages 1-9 Front Matter ....Pages 11-11 Yiddish “Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum” From Early Modern Poland: A Humanistic Symbiosis of Latin Medicine and Jewish Thought (Ewa Geller)....Pages 13-25 ‘When the Rabbi Meets the Doctor’: Differing Attitudes to Medical Diagnosis Among Halakhic Authorities in Eastern and Central Europe in the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Century (Eliezer Sariel)....Pages 27-39 The Debate over Early Burial Amongst Jews in the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in the 1790s (Hans-Uwe Lammel)....Pages 41-60 Front Matter ....Pages 61-61 German Medicine, Folklore and Language in Popular Medical Practices of the Eastern European Jews (Nineteenth to Twentieth Century) (Marek Tuszewicki)....Pages 63-78 Jewish Bodies and Jewish Doctors During the Cholera Years of the Polish Kingdom (Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen)....Pages 79-95 Work of Jewish Medical Community and the Health Culture at School in the Second Republic of Poland (1918–1939) (Beata Szczepańska)....Pages 97-108 A Survey of Jewish Healthcare in Poland After WWII (Ignacy Einhorn, Jakub Einhorn)....Pages 109-127 Front Matter ....Pages 129-129 German-Jewish Doctors as Members of the Colonial Health Service in the Dutch East Indies in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (Philipp Teichfischer)....Pages 131-153 Jewish Students from Silesia Studying at the Medical Faculty of Vienna University in the Years 1850–1938 According to the Records Regarding University Promotion and Requirements (Joanna Lusek, Horst Doležal)....Pages 155-186 Between ‘Here’ and ‘There’: The Dual Identity of Dr. Izrael Milejkowski (Naomi Menuhin)....Pages 187-198 A Doctor’s War Testimony: The Four Incarnations of “Dr. Twardy” (Monika Rice)....Pages 199-217 “Ich bin ein Koszaliner”? Struggles with Belongings in Borderlands. Leslie Baruch Brent’s Autobiography Sunday’s Child? A Memoire (Miłosława Borzyszkowska-Szewczyk)....Pages 219-233 Front Matter ....Pages 235-235 Jewish Doctors: A Place in Holocaust History (Ross W. Halpin)....Pages 237-248 Fate of the Jewish Doctors – Members of the Jewish Chamber of Physicians in the Warsaw Ghetto (1940–1943) (Maria Ciesielska)....Pages 249-260 Coping with the Impossible: The Developmental Roots of the Jewish Medical System in the Ghettos (Miriam Offer)....Pages 261-277