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Medicine and Pharmacy for Women. The Encounter of Jewish Thinking and Practices with the Arabic and Christian Medical Traditions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2008

Carmen Caballero-Navas*
Affiliation:
Departamento de Estudios Semíticos, Área de Hebreo, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Granada, Granada 18071, Spain

Abstract

This article presents a brief analysis of the ways in which women’s healthcare was understood by medieval Jews, as well as how this sphere of medical activity was learned, practised and disseminated among western Jewish communities during the Middle Ages. It examines the paths of transmission and reception of theories and notions of female physiology, health and disease within the Hebrew medical corpus, and it analyses the influence of the Arabic and Latin traditions in this process. In connection with the understanding of women’s healthcare, it pays some attention to adornment and decoration of the body, as part of the technology that focused on intervening in the functioning of the body. It also discusses succinctly the process through which medical ideas and concepts, as well as healing practices, were received, and integrated or refused, by Jews.

Type
Focus: Pharmacy in Islam
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2008

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References

References and Notes

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