Maimonides says in the Mishneh Torah that a healthy body and sound mind are both requirements for the acquisition of spiritual knowledge—for him, the implications of physical health extend to mental and spiritual well-being. Unlike that of most modern physicians, Maimonides’s ultimate goal extended beyond the achievement of physical health and longevity and included the acquisition of spiritual health. References to and brief discussions of medical issues appear in Maimonides’s religious and philosophical works, but in addition to these he is also responsible for a number of specialized medical treatises, most of them composed after 1180, that examine the dominant medical theories and conditions known to him and his contemporaries.
Maimonides was ever the scholar; two of his medical compositions seem to have been derived from his own study notes. His Art of the Cure (ca. 1180) was compiled from extracts of the writings of Galen, a prominent Roman physician and early expert in bodily functions and anatomy. He also produced a compilation of the medical aphorisms of Moses (in 1187-90) and a commentary on the work of the Greek physician Hippocrates (ca. 1191). The pharmacological practices of these Western physicians, as well as their Arab and Persian counterparts, were all collated in Maimonides’s Glossary of Drug Names, which served as a multilingual dictionary of treatments.
Maimonides was the first to write extensively on several conditions that are well-known to us now. He recorded comprehensive descriptions of diseases like diabetes, cirrhosis, asthma, and stroke; these were complemented by guidelines for their diagnosis and the understanding of their pathology, as well as their cure or treatment.
His Regimen of Health (1193-98) presented a plan for living in such a way as to maximize the health of the body and mind. The Regimen is divided into four parts; the first two and the last are generally applicable, while the third is directed specifically to Maimonides’s patron, who was seeking relief from his personal ailments. Maimonides begins his treatise by drawing his reader’s attention to an idea that had been long established—and, indeed, still holds true today: “note how Hippocrates embraces the entire regiment of health into two dicta: that is, that a man should not surfeit himself, and should not neglect exercise.”11 He follows this with specific advice about healthy diets, the merits of exercise, the importance of fresh water and air, and the aiding of good digestion; the ideas presented in the Regimen follow those presented in his Treatise on Hemorrhoids (1187), which also advocates the benefits of a good diet and digestion, and the Discourse on Asthma (1190), which extols fresh air as an essential component for the maintenance of a healthy body.
In the last decade of his life, Maimonides the physician was also interested in the pharmacological possibilities of the world around him. At the behest of his noble patrons, he wrote two letters addressing questions about sexuality that are now known compositely as the Treatise on Coitus; in the treatise he discusses issues of sexual hygiene and the use of aphrodisiacs and anti-aphrodisiacs. In 1198, he produced A Book on Poisons and Protection from Lethal Drugs, which served as a textbook for medical programs until well into the eighteenth century.
Today, Maimonides’s reputation as a religious philosopher often eclipses his repute as a physician, but his career as such is well documented and further helps establish his status as a Renaissance man in the truest sense of the phrase. His ideas about medicine and leading a healthy life resonate in the sort of advice that modern patients often receive from their doctors. Maimonides advocated what we might today call “holistic treatment”—he addressed physical symptoms through traditional and pharmacological means and by focusing on underlying causes, but he also saw a connection between these manifestations of illness and the weakness or sickness of the soul. We find among his prescriptions one for a “cheerful” disposition that might ward off negativity, and we should remember that all of his advice was given alongside the implied message that the maintenance of a healthy body is one prerequisite for the achievement of spiritual health.
World History
