Ma’ase Tuviya (Venice 1708): Tuviya on Medicine & Science (Muriel and Philip Berman Medical Library, 2021), edited by Kenneth Collins, Samuel Kottek, and Helena Paavilainen
Reviewed by Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein
I first came across the work Ma’ase
Tuviya as a teenager in my Yeshiva library, but I was never sure about what
to make of it. Who is its intended audience, and why was it written? Ma’ase
Tuviya represents an eclectic mix of theology, science, geography, astronomy/astrology,
and medicine in a sort of encyclopedia that freely quotes from Greek doctors
and rabbinic literature in the same breath. The book under review is a scholarly
volume that presents various academic essays that look at Ma’ase Tuviya
from different angles.
This book contextualizes Ma’ase
Tuviya by revealing biographical details about its author and the
sociocultural milieu in which he was active. Rabbi Dr. Tuviya HaKohen Katz
(1652–1729) originally came from the town of Metz (on the French-German border)
and was actually a stepbrother to Rabbi Yair Chaim Bachrach (1639–1702), Chief
Rabbi of Worms and author of the popular responsa Chavos Yair. He
studied medicine in Krakow and Frankfort-on-the-Oder, but quickly relocated to
the prestigious University of Padua, where he received his degree. In Padua,
Tuviyah was one of many Jewish medical pupils throughout the generations, and
it was largely for the benefit of such students that he penned Ma’ase Tuviya
as a primer on the basics of medicine geared towards students firmly grounded
in Torah literature. As this book makes clear, Tuviya’s purpose for writing Ma’ase
Tuviya was two-fold: He sought to help prepare Jewish students for the
European world of study and to prove to the world at large that Jewish
literature can positively contribute to the sciences.
After completing his degree,
Tuviya practiced medicine in Poland and eventually relocated to Adrianople and
then Constantinople (Istanbul), where served as the capitals of the Ottoman
Turkish Empire. As a renowned doctor, Tuviya served as the personal physician
to five successive sultans. It was during this period of his life that in the
year 1708, Tuviya published Ma’ase Tuviya (first printed in Venice), and
then spent the years 1709–1713 preparing to publish the works of
his deceased father, Rabbi Dr. Moshe Narol. After publishing his
father’s works, Tuviya immigrated to Jerusalem (which was under Turkish rule),
where he lived for the rest of his life. Ari Morgenstern’s essay published in
this book speculates about the different reasons that may have led Tuviya to
relocate to Jerusalem and his role in helping the impoverished Ashkenazic
community there.
In the first chapter of this
book, Kenneth Collins provides the reader with an account of Tuviya’s
schooling, including the anti-Semitism he faced before transferring to the
University of Padua, and generally how Jewish students were able to fare in
their medical studies in the Italian city of Padua. In the subsequent chapter,
Samuel Kottek provides more of the context and cultural milieu in which Tuviya
operated. Particularly, he discusses how Tuviya’s understanding of biology and
medicine are shaped not only by ancient Jewish and Greek sources, but also by the
burgeoning research of Renaissance physicians like the Swiss doctor Paracelsus
(1493–1541), who began to question the assumptions found in Galenic,
Aristotelian, and Hippocratic literature. Dr. Jeremy Brown (author of the
Talmudology Blog) contributed a chapter that compares and contrasts Tuviya’s
medical works with those of other physician-scientists of his time and
considers whether Tuviya’s information really presented the latest state-of-art
research.
Rabbi Dr. Edward Reichman
presents a fun— but highly informative —essay that explores how Tuviya’s
diploma from Padua may have theoretically looked. He draws on precedents seen
on the diplomas of other medical graduates from Padua to piece together how
Tuviya’s might have looked. R. Dr. Reichman reproduces facsimiles of several
such diplomas and speculates on which of those features might have been present
on Tuviya’s. This essay has several counterparts in Reichman’s series on Jewish
medical history published on Seforim Blog.
Several other essays zone in on
very specific aspects of Ma’ase Tuviya: Etienne Lepicard’s essay focuses
on Ma’ase Tuviya’s presentation of female physiology and the roles of
each gender in the reproductive process. As far as this reviewer knows, Ma’ase
Tuviya is actually the first Hebrew work to make reference to the clitoris.
Another essay, penned by Shalom Sabar, focuses on the artistic aspects of Ma’ase
Tuviya, particularly looking at its title page, author portrait, and
various scientific diagrams. Helena Paavilainen offers a learned case study of
Tuviya’s explorations of headaches and how to deal with them. She surveys the
various etiological explanations for headaches and the remedies that Tuviya
recommends for treating such ailments.
Another contemporary scholar
whose presence looms large in this book, but does not contribute an essay of
his own, is the celebrated author of Jewish medical works, Rabbi Dr. Fred Rosner
(father of Rabbi Shalom Rosner, a popular Daf Yomi lecturer and rabbi in Bet Shemesh).
His esteemed presence bookends this scholarly volume with a foreword and words
of appreciation at the beginning, as well as a lengthy appendix in which he
translated excerpts of Ma’ase Tuviya into English at the end.
All in all, this reviewer
thoroughly enjoyed learning more about Ma’ase Tuviya and its colorful
author. With this scholarly work in hand, I have access to all the necessary
background to understanding the medical parts of Ma’ase Tuviya and can
now finally understood what this book is really all about. I’m looking forward
to future scholarship that will explore other parts of Ma’ase Tuviya and
shed light on those sections of the encyclopedia. In the meantime, Ma’ase
Tuviya (Venice 1708): Tuviya on Medicine & Science is a great work that
will open up new worlds of future scholarship.
