Are Doctors Good For The Soul?

(26) and He said: ‘If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His eyes, and wilt give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases upon thee, which I have put upon the Egyptians; for I am the LORD that healeth thee.’

(25) And ye shall serve the LORD your God, and He will bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee.

(1) In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him, and said unto him: ‘Thus saith the LORD: Set thy house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.’ (2) Then he turned his face to the wall, and prayed unto the LORD, saying: (3) ’Remember now, O LORD, I beseech Thee, how I have walked before Thee in truth and with a whole heart, and have done that which is good in Thy sight.’ And Hezekiah wept sore.

(12) And in the thirty and ninth year of his reign Asa was diseased in his feet; his disease was exceeding great; yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians. (13) And Asa slept with his fathers, and died in the one and fortieth year of his reign.

(19) if he rise again, and walk abroad upon his staff, then shall he that smote him be quit; only he shall pay for the loss of his time, and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed.

On going in to be bloodlet one should say: 'May it be Your will, O Lord, my God, that this operation may be a cure for me, and may You heal me, for You are a faithful healing God, and Your healing is certain, since it is not the way of man to heal, but this is a habit with them.' Abaye said: A man should not speak thus, since it was taught in the school of R. Ishmael: [It is written], He shall cause him to be thoroughly healed. From this we learn that permission has been given to the physician to heal. When he gets up [after cupping] what does he say? — R. Aha said: Blessed be He who heals without payment.

The best of doctors go to hell.

(9) The following six things were done by King Hezekiah; three of which were approved of, and three were disapproved... He hid away the Book of Healing, and they agreed...

In three they agreed: He hid the Book of Healing and they agreed with him

And it was taught: Any city that does not have in it these ten things, a Sage may not live within it....a doctor...

Whosoever has a sick person in his house should go to a sage who will invoke [heavenly] mercy for him; as it is said: The wrath of a king is as messengers of death, but a wise man will pacify it.

The rule is that when the Jewish People are in a state of spiritual perfection, neither their physical bodies nor their country, nor any of their other affairs are governed by nature at all. This applies to the nation as a whole and to each individual Jew. For God `will bless their bread and their water, and remove illness from their midst' (Exodus 23:25). They will have no need of doctors, nor will they have to follow medical procedures even as precautionary measures, `For I, God, am your healer' (Exodus 15:26). In the era of prophecy, the tzaddikim acted accordingly. Even if they happened to sin and became sick, they consulted not doctors but prophets, as did King Hezekiah when he was sick (Kings II, 20, 2-3). It is said of King Asa that `even in his sickness he did not seek out God, but he turned to the doctors' (Chronicles II, 16:13). If it was common for them to go to doctors, why should the verse mention doctors at all? Asa's only guilt would have lain in the fact that he did not seek out God. But this phrasing is similar to saying, `He did not eat matzah on Pesach but chametz.' Someone who seeks out God through the priest will not consult doctors.

What place do doctors have in the house of those who carry out the will of God, after He promised that `He will bless their bread and their water, and remove illness from their midst'? The only function of the medical profession should be to give nutritional advice - what to eat and drink and what to avoid. Thus the Rabbis said, `For the entire twenty-two years of Rabbah's leadership, Rav Yosef did not even call a bloodletter to his house' (Berakhot 64a). They went by the principle that `a door that does not open to charity will open to the doctor' (Bemidbar Rabbah 9:3).

It is true that the Rabbis said, `because it is not the way of human beings to bring about a cure, but this is the practice' (Berakhot 60a,). But this merely means that, had they not been in the habit of resorting to medicine, a person who became sick because of his sin could have been healed through the will of God alone. However, since they resorted to medicines, God abandoned them to the vicissitudes of nature.

"As for the rabbinic comment on the verse, `He shall cause him to be thoroughly healed' (Exodus 21:19) - `from here we learn that the physician has been given sanction to heal' (Berakhot 60a) - they did not say that license has been given to the sick to resort to medicine. What they meant is that if a doctor is approached by a patient who was in the habit of resorting to medicine and was not part of the community of God whose share is life, the doctor should not refrain from treating him, not from fear that the patient might die under his hand - seeing as the doctor is expert in his craft - nor on the grounds that God alone is the healer of all flesh - because this patient is already in the habit of resorting to medicine. It is true that if two people quarrel and one hits the other with a stone or his fist, the Torah lays down that the attacker must pay the medical expenses of the injured party (Exodus 21:18). But this is because Torah law does not rely on miracles, for God knew that `the needy will not cease from the midst of the earth' (Deuteronomy 15:11). But when a person's ways find favor in God's eyes, he has no business with doctors."

But Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said, "Rabbi Chanina permitted me to drink cress on the sabbath [for healing]... And why [was it specifically] Rabbi Chaninah [who said that statement about healing]? Because he was an expert in medicine.

Shmuel Yarchina'a was Rabbi's doctor...

Shmuel is different because of his vast [knowledge of] physiology.

Rabbi Ami the physician said...

Tudos the doctor and all the doctors with him entered...

Rabbi Yermiyah fell sick. The doctor came to heal him...

R. Johanan suffered from scurvy. He went to a matron, who prepared something for him on Thursday and Friday... Abaye said: I tried everything without achieving a cure for myself, until an Arab recommended: ‘Take the stones of olives which have not become ripe one third, burn them in fire upon a new rake, and stick them into the inside of the gums’. I did so and was cured...

One of the opinions generally known in those times and perpetuated by the Sabians was expressed by their statement concerning the grafting of a tree of one species onto another tree. They said that if this is done I when a certain star is in the ascendant and if certain fumigations are made and certain invocations pronounced at the time of the grafting, that which is produced by the graft will be a thing that, as they believe, will be very useful. The clearest point concerning these things is the one mentioned in the beginning of the "Agriculture" concerning the grafting of the olive tree onto the citron tree. In my opinion it must indubitably be true that the book of medicaments that was suppressed by Hezekiah belonged to this group.

(6) But I trust in Your kindness, my heart will exult in Your deliverance...