Medieval Jewish Views on the Preservation of Health at the Crossroads of Arabic and Latin Medici

Abstract

This essay analyses the development of medieval Jewish understandings of preventive medicine and body maintenance in the multicultural framework of the Mediterranean West. To that end, it offers an overview of the main texts belonging to the genres associated with the preservation of health, authored by Jews or translated into Hebrew during the Middle Ages both in Islamicate and Christian societies in the region, with the aim of bringing to light the plurality of geographical, social, and cultural dynamics at play concerning healthy living. On that account, notions grounded in Jewish tradition and/or practice have also been analysed, along with the medical notions that originated in the Graeco-Arabic and Latin medical traditions. Finally, the essay offers a gendered reading of this medical specialty to underline, on the one hand, the near-total absence of women from its written works; and, on the other, the way in which some of the texts endeavour to establish women’s inadequacy to prevent disease.