Medicine played an important role in the early secularization and   eventual modernization of German Jewish culture. And as both physicians and patients   Jews exerted a great influence on the formation of modern medical discourse and   practice. This fascinating book investigates the relationship between German Jews and   medicine from medieval times until its demise under the Nazis.    John Efron examines the rise of the German Jewish physician in the Middle Ages and his   emergence as a new kind of secular, Jewish intellectual in the early modern period and   beyond. The author shows how nineteenth-century medicine regarded Jews as possessing   distinct physical and mental pathologies, which in turn led to the emergence in modern   Germany of the "Jewish body" as a cultural and scientific idea. He demonstrates why   Jews flocked to the medical profession in Germany and Austria, noting that by 1933, 50   percent of Berlin's and 60 percent of Vienna's physicians were Jewish. He discusses the   impact of this on Jewish and German culture, concluding with the fate of Jewish doctors   under the Nazis, whose assault on them was designed to eliminate whatever intimacy had   been built up between Germans and their Jewish doctors over the centuries.

Medicine and the German Jews: A History PDF

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