Medieval Medical Literature

Español/English
Este trabajo examina distintas visiones sobre el cuerpo femenino que articulan los textos hebreos medievales dedicados al cuidado de la salud de las mujeres e investiga en qué medida están representadas en ellos las percepciones que las propias mujeres tienen de sus cuerpos, y de sus necesidades y preocupaciones. Para ello, he analizado el tratamiento que este género de la literatura hebrea ha dado a dos temas clave en la sexuación de los cuerpos: la menstruación y la cosmética.

This essay explores different views on the female body articulated within Hebrew medieval texts on women’s health care. It also investigates whether texts also integrate women’s own perceptions of their bodies, and of their needs and care. I have analysed how this genre of Hebrew literature understood two key issues in the construction of sexed bodies: menstruation and cosmetics.

This index of medical medieval texts is the first result of a collective work started in the 60s. It is deliberately limited to medical works (to the exclusion of veterinary art, alchemy, and natural philosophy) and to texts composed before 1500 ; it includes almost 2300 headwords, divided among anonymous (about 740) and authors (about 1540),and this total reflects the examination of more than 500 manuscripts.

This essay approaches the medieval Hebrew literature on women’s healthcare, with the aim of analysing notions and ideas regarding fertility, pregnancy and childbirth, as conveyed in the texts that form the corpus. Firstly, the work discusses the approach of written
texts to pregnancy and childbirth as key elements in the explanation of women’s health and the functioning of the female body. In this regard it also explores the role of this approach in the creation of meanings for both the female body and sexual difference. Secondly, it examines female management of pregnancy and childbirth as recorded in Hebrew medical literature. It pays attention to both the attitudes expressed by the authors, translators and copyists regarding female practice, as well as to instances and remedies derived from «local» traditions —that is, from women’s experience— in the management of pregnancy and childbirth, also recorded in the texts. Finally, the paper explores how medical theories alien to, or in opposition to, Judaism were adopted or not and, at times, adapted to Jewish notions with the aim of eliminating tensions from the text, on the one hand, and providing Jewish practitioners with adequate training to retain their Christian clientele, on the other.