and successful pursuit of it during the
Middle Ages. The two great collections of Hebrew documents, the Old
Testament and the Talmud, contain an immense amount of material with
reference to medical problems of many kinds. Both of these works are
especially interesting because of what they have to say of preventive
medicine and with regard to the recognition of disease. Our prophylaxis
and diagnosis are important scientific departments of medicine dependent
on observation rather than on theory. While therapeutics has wandered
into all sorts of absurdities, the advances made in prophylaxis and in
diagnosis have always remained valuable, and though at times they have
been forgotten, re-discovery only emphasizes the value of preceding
work. It is because of what they contain with regard to these two
important medical subjects that the Old Testament and the Talmud are
landmarks in the history of medicine as well as of religion.

Baas, in his "Outlines of the History of Medicine," says: "It
corresponds to the reality in both the actual and chronological point of
view to consider the books of Moses as the foundation of sanitary
science. The more we have learned about sanitation in the prophylaxis of
disease and in the prevention of contagion in the modern time, the more
have we come to appreciate highly the teachings of these old times on
such subjects. Moses made a masterly exposition of the knowledge
necessary to prevent contagious disease when he laid down the rules with
regard to leprosy, first as to careful differentiation, then as to
isolation, and finally as to disinfection after it had come to be sure
that cure had taken place. The great lawgiver could insist emphatically
that the keeping of the laws of God not only was good for a man's soul
but also for his body."

With this tradition familiarly known and deeply studied by the mass of
the Hebrew people, it is no surprise to find that when the next great
Hebrew development of religious writing came in the Talmud during the
earlier Middle Ages, that also contains much with regard to medicine,
not a little of which is so close to absolute truth as never to be out
of date. Friedenwald, in his "Jewish Physicians and the Contributions of
the Jews to the Science of Medicine," a lecture delivered before the
Gratz College of Philadelphia fifteen years ago, summed up from Baas'
"History of Medicine" the instructions in the Talmud with regard to
health and disease. The summary