Maimonides
Author: Sherwin B. Nuland
ISBN(s): 0805242007
Article Number: 999800014698
Language: EN
Publisher: Schocken Books
Hardcover
230 pages
Reputedly the greatest figure in Judaism after his namesake, Moses Maimonides (1138 [not, as long supposed, 1135]-1204) was also a great physician. That second identity (he has a third as a philosopher, though no one now comprehends his Guide for the Perplexed, and a fourth as a judge) furnishes the surgeon--author of the National Book Award-winning How We Die (1994) entree into the life of this medieval intellectual titan. Like disproportionately many Jewish sons, Maimonides became a doctor in obedience, Nuland thinks, to the Lord's injunction to his people to choose life. In chapters centered on Maimonides' travels, three great books, and medical papers, Nuland argues that that obedience shows in more than Maimonides' medical career. Maimonides was devoted to sustaining the Jews as a people, and out of that, to human life generally. If he was otherwise a physician of his time, bound by the authority of Hippocrates and Galen, he believed that reason and observation should also inform prescription. A little gem of intellectual biography.
