Jewish Medicine and Healthcare in Central Eastern Europe - Shared Identities, Entangled Histories

Is 'Jewish medicine' a valid historical category? Does it represent a collective constituted by the interplay of medical, ethnic and religious cultures? Integrating academic disciplines from medical history to philology and Jewish studies, this book aims at answering this question historically by presenting  comprehensive coverage of Jewish medical traditions in Central Eastern Europe, mostly on what is today Poland and Germany (and the former Russian, Prussian and Austro-Hungarian Empires). In this significant zone of ethnic, religious and cultural interaction, Jewish, Polish, and German traditions and communities were more entangled, and identities were shared to an extent greater than anywhere else. Starting with early modern times and the Enlightenment, through the 19th century, up until the horrors of medicine in the ghettos and concentration camps, the book collects a variety of perspectives on the question of how Judaism and Jewish culture were dynamically related to medicine and healthcare. It discusses the Halachic traditions, hygiene-related stereotypes, the organization of healthcare within specified communities, academic careers, hybrid medical identities, and diversified medical practices.

Marcin Moskalewicz studied history and philosophy of science at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, University of California at Berkeley (2003) and Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (2005, 2007). In 2009 he defended his PhD in philosophy of history in the 'European Doctorate' framework (cum laude). He is currently a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Texas A&M University, and Assistant Professor at the Chair of the History of Medical Sciences at Poznan University of Medical Sciences (Poland). He is the current Vice-President and former President of the German-Polish Society for the History of Medicine.
Fritz Dross studied history and information science at the Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf (Germany). In 2002 he defended his PhD in modern history (Krankenhaus und lokale Politik, 1770-1850). In 2004 he became Assistant Professor at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Medical Ethics in Erlangen. In 2010 he completed his habilitation (venia legendi) with a work on late medieval and early modern urban leper care. He is currently Associate Professor at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Medical Ethics at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany). He is current President of the German Society for the History of Hospitals (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Krankenhausgeschichte), and the German-Polish Society for the History of Medicine.