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Jews, Medicine, and Medieval Society

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Joseph Shatzmiller has written a cogent and richly referenced history of Jewish physicians and their complex relationship to medieval society. Shatzmiller describes the the impact of Jewish physicians in a society that valued the importance of Jewish physicians to the field of medicine while at the same time holding Jews and Jewish culture at arms length, considering Jews with suspicion and outright hostility. The growth in the need for physicians and as Shatzmiller puts it the "medicalization" of society in the early 13th century allows the growth of the number of Jewish physicians, in part because of the opposition of the Church to the clerical practice of medicine, and in part because of internal forces within Jewish communities that made it advantageous for Jews to practice medicine. Joseph Shatzmiller has written an important contribution to our understanding of medieval medicine, and the role Jewish physicians played in it. This volume is includes a large bibliography and is well footnoted. I strongly recommend this volume to anyone interested in the history of medieval European medicine, and the role Jewish physicians played in the growth of the occidental medical tradition.