the
Mohammedans later, men of genius from the race succeeded in making their
influence felt not only on their own times, but accomplished so much in
making and writing medicine as to influence many subsequent generations.
Living the segregated life that as a rule they had to, from the earliest
times (the Ghettos have only disappeared in the nineteenth century), it
would seem almost impossible for them to have done great intellectual
work. It is one of the very common illusions, however, that great
intellectual work is accomplished mainly in the midst of comfortable
circumstances and as the result of encouraging conditions. Most of our
great makers of medicine at all times, and never more so than during the
past century, have been the sons of the poor, who have had to earn their
own living, as a rule, before they reached manhood, and who have always
had the spur of that necessity which has been so well called the mother
of invention. Their hard living conditions probably rather favored than
hampered their intellectual accomplishments.

It is not unlikely that the difficult personal circumstances in which
the Jews were placed had a good deal to do at all times with stimulating
their ambitions and making them accomplish all that was in them. Certain
it is that at all times we find a wonderful power in the people to rise
above their conditions. With them, however, as with other peoples,
luxury, riches, comfort, bring a surfeit to initiative and the race does
not accomplish so much. At various times in the early Middle Ages,
particularly, we find Jewish physicians doing great work and obtaining
precious acknowledgment for it in spite of the most discouraging
conditions. Later it is not unusual to find that there has been a
degeneration into mere money-making as the result of opportunity and
consequent ease and luxury. At a number of times, however, both in
Christian and in Mohammedan countries, great Jewish physicians arose
whose names have come to us and with whom every student of medicine who
wants to know something about the details of the course of medical
history must be familiar. There are men among them who must be
considered among the great lights of medicine, significant makers always
of the art and also in nearly all cases of the science of medicine.

A little consideration of the history of the Jewish people and their
great documents eliminates any surprise there may be with regard to
their interest in medicine