Medicine and the German Jews

Scrutinizes Jewish history in Western Europe, especially in German-speaking countries, and the German-Jewish relationship from the Middle Ages to 1933, through the lens of medicine. Medicine influenced Jewish culture and was a vehicle of integration into Western society; it also contributed to the shaping of modern Jewish identity. Examines, inter alia, medieval and early modern superstitions concerning Jewish doctors (e.g. they use magic, spread diseases, poison patients, and extort money from gullible patients). 17th-19th-century literature is full of vile images of Jewish doctors. Examines, also, the stereotype of the Jew as predisposed to illness (e.g. tuberculosis, mental disease), having weak constitutions, or being feminine. These beliefs were very stable, although medical statistics showed the opposite; these images were a result of antisemitic attitudes. In the 19th century medicine was used in the defense of Jewish religious practices. Dwells on the anti-shehita laws, enacted for the first time in Switzerland, and the Jewish struggle against them. Discusses, also, discrimination against Jewish doctors and medical students in Germany and Austria in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Many medieval prejudices against Jewish doctors resurfaced at that time. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)