Did Maimonides ignite the cannabis craze, asks new book about Jews and medicine

The book chronicles the remedies prescribed by the first Jewish doctors and their Levantine counterparts through to today’s cutting-edge innovations

IF YOU THINK medical marijuana is a contemporary craze, here’s a surprise: No less a sage than physician-rabbi Moses ben Maimon prescribed plant-based drugs with psychoactive effects in Cairo during the Middle Ages.

To treat melancholy patients, Maimonides, as ben Maimon is known, chose from 100 separate drugs, some with sedative effects. Several, such as basil, grapes and pepper, are familiar from the garden or supermarket. One unusual animal-based product topped these on the rabbi’s list — castoreum, a liquid secreted by beavers.

We may never look at Maimonides the same way, thanks to a new anthology in which he appears in several chapters, Medicine: From Biblical Canaan to Modern Israel, co-edited by doctors Kenneth Collins and Stuart Stanton. Similarly, this groundbreaking book gives readers a chance to reappraise the role of medicine itself in the land that now forms the State of Israel and some of its surroundings.

FULL STORY Did Maimonides ignite the cannabis craze? Book probes roles of Jews in medicine (Times of Israel)

Photo: Maimonides by Solomon Souza. Mahane Yehuda, Jerusalem, February 2016. (Renee Ghert-Zand/TOI)