The Hyams Collection of Medical Hebraica and Judaica
Editions of The book of knowledge, a popular astrological and medical work, begin to appear in the 1530s and were printed regularly in England and America into the early 19th century. Although described on the title-page as “a Jew, Doctor in Astronomy and Physic, born in Bethany, near Mount Olivet, in Judea,” Erra Pater was not a real person.
Jewish physician Toviyah Kats or Tobias ben Moses Cohn studied in Krakow and Padua, practiced in Poland, knew nine languages, and was court physician to five sultans in Adrianople. In 1724, he moved to Jerusalem. The Ma’aseh Tobiyyah [“Work of Tobias”] is an encyclopedic work of theology, botany, astronomy, chemistry, geology, and medicine. The illustration here compares the rooms and functions of a house with the organs of the human body.
This is a second edition, and a copy of the first edition of the text, from 1708, is also part of the Hyams Collection.
This first printed edition of the collected works of Isaac Israeli includes the tract on fevers. The title-page woodcut depicts an impossible meeting of Isaac with his eleventh century commentators Constantine the African and Ibn Abi al-Rijal.