Susan L. Einbinder ed. and trans. “A Jewish Physician’s Response to the Black Death: Abraham Caslari’s “Tractate on Pestilential Fevers and Fever Types.”
Abraham Caslari was a Jewish physician in Catalonia, where he and his family found refuge after the great expulsion of French Jews in 1306. In 1348, he was also one of the many physicians who found themselves treating men, women, and children during the Black Death. Rejecting the emerging consensus among physicians that the fevers were pestilential, Caslari insisted that this misdiagnosis had caused many needless deaths. The Hebrew tractate that presents his analysis and recommended treatments is one of the earliest written responses to the Black Death by a contemporary physician. Writing in the shadow of the anti-Jewish violence of the time, Caslari’s exemplar is important not only for what he has to say, but because it represents a moment before genre conventions relating to Black Death tractates became fixed.
This study makes the tractate available in English for the first time, accompanied by an introduction to the work and to its remarkable author.
Find it by clicking here.
Guillet Philippe “L’Anathomia ricardius Anglicus”
This treatise appears to be the first comprehensive synthesis of the anatomical and physiological details found in Constantine the African’s Pantegni, organized according to Galen’s classification of the major organs as described in the Tegni.
German medical historians, who first published a few manuscripts at the end of the 19th century, initially believed that the work was authored in Salerno. However, this text belongs to two distinct traditions, each of which achieved remarkable success. The first tradition, authored by Ricardus anglicus, likely originated in Montpellier at the end of the 12th century and rapidly spread throughout the abbey network to northern and eastern Europe, including France, England, Germany, and Poland. The second tradition emerged as a significant revision of the original text, incorporating elements from Aristotle’s biological works shortly after their translation in the early 13th century. It was taught at the University of Montpellier and quickly spread to the same geographical regions as the first tradition.
These two traditions were adapted into the vernacular in the 15th century, demonstrating their enduring appeal over three centuries.
Find it by clicking here.
