Special Cluster Learning Practice from Texts: Jews and Medicine in the Later Middle Ages

Abstract

Abstract The study of the medical practices of medieval European Jews has tended to centre on the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion of Jews in European societies, with medical practices and non-learned practitioners within Jewish communities receiving less attention. Information is particularly lacking on the more rudimentary aspects of medical training and practice, daily medical care and household medicine. This essay highlights features of the historiography of Jewish activity in medicine that beckon new or renewed scholarly attention. The essay introduces a cluster of articles, which begin to fill this lacuna while charting methodological keys for future work in the field.