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June 7, 2002
Role of Jews in medicine
Author looks at history from Genesis to the 1950s.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Jews and Medicine: An
Epic Saga
By Frank Heynick
New Jersey, KTAV Publishing House Inc., 2002. 602 pages. $39.50
US
History buffs, science nuts and political science enthusiasts alike
will delight in Jews and Medicine: An Epic Saga. At 602 pages, Dr.
Frank Heynick's book is an impressive work that requires an ambitious
reader but, as he writes in the acknowledgments, "even with
a lot of trimming, nothing less could do justice to the sweeping,
unending epic that is the story of Jews and medicine."
For example, the serpent on a pole that is the symbol of the medical
profession is called the staff of Asklepios, after a Greek physician
who lived in the eighth or ninth century BCE. However, a few hundred
years earlier, during the Exodus from Egypt, God sent serpents among
the Israelites and many people died: "And the Lord said unto
Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent and set it upon a pole; and it
shall come to pass that everyone that is bitten, when he looketh
upon it, shall live." (Numbers 21:8)
This is one of the first stories that Heynick tells as the history
of Jews and medicine unfolds. He takes us from the Bible all the
way through to the 1950s, touching upon the contributions of people
too numerous to list completely. They include the sage Maimonides
in the 12th century; the excommunicated Baruch Spinoza in the 17th
century; and the first Jewish Nobel Prize winner, Paul Ehrlich,
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. More than 40 Nobel Prize
winners in medicine in the 20th century were Jewish.
Heynick received his doctorate in medicine from the University of
Groningen (the Netherlands). He also holds an MA in linguistics
from Columbia University and a BA in history from Hunter College.
He has served as a lecturer at various universities and has authored
more than 250 publications, including articles for the Jewish
Western Bulletin.
In Jews and Medicine, Heynick takes readers not only through
the important medical breakthroughs and their discoverers, but puts
them into social, political, religious and cultural context. He
even provides some of the drama behind the scenes.
For example, Selman Waksman discovered the use of streptomycin for
the treatment of tuberculosis, among other ailments, in the first
half of the 19th century. He did so with the help of many assistants,
including Albert Schatz, whose name – unfortunately for Waksman
– was listed first on the three important journal articles
announcing streptomycin to the world and whose name was also on
the patent application for the substance. Schatz sued Waksman over
royalities and eventually they settled out of court. The situation
flared up again when, in 1952, the Nobel Prize committee announced
that Waksman would be the sole recipient of that year's prize in
medicine. Despite Schatz's objections, Waksman was so honored.
Heynick also manages to inject humor into what could have amounted
to a drab accounting of historical details. In discussing medicine's
early years, he writes: "What distinguished the deadly poison
of the murderer from the supposedly life-saving drug of the physician
was too often merely the intended use to which the substance was
put - not the actual outcome."
Among the myriad questions that Jews and Medicine answers are why
anti-Semitic kings always chose Jewish personal physicians, why
rabbis who were suspicious of Renaissance sciences nonetheless encouraged
their students to study new developments in medicine and why Hollywood
producers were wary about making a movie about Ehrlich.
Heynick ends his epic in the 1950s because, as he states in the
epilogue, "When writing of developments that have shaped the
destiny of mankind, a sense of perspective is vital, and this is
best gained when events are viewed at some distance." And you
would think that, as a reader, you would be satiated after 600 pages.
However, Heynick somehow leaves you wanting more.
Jews and Medicine can be ordered on KTAV's Web site, www.ktav.com,
or from www.amazon.com,
Barnes and Noble's Website (www.bn.com)
or any Barnes and Noble bookstore.
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