Talmudic medical recipes (4)

Text
The Talmudic scholar Abaye offers a recipe in Gittin 70a for the related condition of ‘burning in bones,’ but on this occasion Abaye cites a general rule of healing, that medicines should be taken on empty stomach, which is a standard rule in the Akkadian medicine, for 3 or 7 or 12 days, and after taking medicines one should have the patient eat šatita with lentils and old wine, mixed together equally which is another standard Akkadian rule. Afterwards one must wrap the patient in his cloak to sleep. It is likely that this recipe is also misunderstood by the redactors of the Talmud. The word šatita, instead of referring to a dish, can simply be a general word for ‘beverage’, and the wrapping in the cloak is likely to be a corruption of the instruction to wrap materia medica in a cloth or wad of wool (Akkadian itqu) to be applied as a poultice.

Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 70a

Bibliography

Mark Geller

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