Is 'Jewish medicine' a valid historical category? Does it represent a collective constituted by the interplay of medical, ethnic and religious cultures? Integrating academic disciplines from medical history to philology and Jewish studies, this book aims at answering this question historically by presenting comprehensive coverage of Jewish medical traditions in Central Eastern Europe, mostly on what is today Poland and Germany (and the former Russian, Prussian and Austro-Hungarian Empires). In this significant zone of ethnic, religious and cultural interaction, Jewish, Polish, and German traditions and communities were more entangled, and identities were shared to an extent greater than anywhere else. Starting with early modern times and the Enlightenment, through the 19th century, up until the horrors of medicine in the ghettos and concentration camps, the book collects a variety of perspectives on the question of how Judaism and Jewish culture were dynamically related to medicine and healthcare. It discusses the Halachic traditions, hygiene-related stereotypes, the organization of healthcare within specified communities, academic careers, hybrid medical identities, and diversified medical practices.

1. Jewish - German - Polish: Histories and Traditions in Medical Culture (Marcin Moskalewicz).- Part I. Between Religious and Medical Authority: Early Modern Jewish Care for Body and Soul.- 2. Yiddish 'Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum' from Early Modern Poland: A Humanistic Symbiosis of Latin Medicine and Jewish Thought (Ewa Geller).- 3. 'When the Rabbi Meets the Doctor': Differing Attitudes to Medical Diagnosis among Halakhic Authorities in Eastern and Central Europe in the 16th-19th Century (Eliezer Sariel).- 4. The Debate over Early Burial amongst Jews in the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in the 1790s (Hans-Uwe Lammel).- Part II. Modern Jewish Healthcare: Community and the State.- 5. German Medicine, Folklore and Language in Popular Medical Practices of the Eastern European Jews (19th-20th century) (Marek Tuszewicki).- 6. Jewish Bodies and Jewish Doctors during the Cholera Years of the Polish Kingdom (Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen).- 7. Work of Jewish Medical Community and the Health Culture at School in the Second Republic of Poland (1918-1939) (Beata Szczepanska).- 8. A Survey of Jewish Healthcare in Poland after WWII (Ignacy Einhorn).- Part III. Shared Identities.- 9. German-Jewish Doctors as Members of the Colonial Health service in the Dutch East Indies in the First Half of the 19th Century (Philipp Teichfischer).- 10. Jewish Students from Silesia Studying at the Medical Faculty of Vienna University in the Years 1850-1938 According to the Records Regarding University Promotion and Requirements (Joanna Lusek).- 11. Between 'Here' and 'There': The Dual Identity of Dr. Izrael Milejkowski (Naomi Menuhin).- 12. A Doctor's War Testimony: The Four Incarnations of "Dr. Twardy" (Monika Rice).- 13. "Ich bin ein Koszaliner"? Struggles with Belongings in Borderlands. Leslie Baruch Brent's Autobiography Sunday's Child? A memoire (Miloslawa Borzyszkowska-Szewczyk).- Part IV. Jewish Doctors in the Face of Terror and Extermination.- 14. Jewish Doctors: A placein Holocaust History (Ross Halpin).- 15. Fate of Jewish the Doctors - Members of the Jewish Chamber of Physicians in the Warsaw Ghetto (1940-1943) (Maria Ciesielska).- 16. Coping with the Impossible. The Developmental Roots of the Jewish Medical System in the Ghettos (Miriam Offer).