The Doctor Is Still In
Medieval Rabbi-Healer Maimonides Linked Body, Soul
By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 26, 2005; Page C01
No one in his right mind today would willingly submit to the medical ministrations of Moses Maimonides, the great 12th-century Jewish doctor and philosopher. Maimonides, very much a man of the medieval world, possessed a medical wisdom that was little more than a mix of herbs and hokum, borrowed from the ancient Greeks. At best, it might meet the basic ethical dictum to do no harm.
Yet Maimonides remains almost a saint among doctors, a medieval Albert Schweitzer, a Jewish Hippocrates. Hospitals around the world bear his name and Jewish doctors still gather together in Maimonides Societies in almost every American city. And as Yale surgeon and best-selling author Sherwin Nuland points out in a new book, many Jews still feel a deep affinity for the man they know by an acronym of his Hebrew name, "the Rambam."
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A long, interesting article. The 800th anniversary of Maimonides's death was in 2004.
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