An Alternative to the Cosmic and Mechanic Metaphors for the Human Body? The House Illustration in Ma'aseh Tuviyah (1708)

Abstract

In Ma'aseh Tuviyah, a Hebrew medical treatise published in Venice at the dawn of the eighteenth century, there is a magnificent illustration in which the human body is portrayed as a house.1 What was the function of such an illustration? What is its significance? In the following article I will postulate that such an illustration would have served primarily as a mnemonic device for (Jewish) students of medicine. It may also be seen, however, as a possible alternative to the mechanistic vision that has dominated our conception of the human body since the onset of the scientific revolution; an alternative with deep roots in Hebrew culture as well that in “the arts of memory”. In medieval medical treatises, the body is often portrayed in relation to the universe as a reflection of the heavenly bodies. Man is defined as a “little world” or microcosm, and the universe that he reflects as a “great world” or macrocosm2—as, for example, in such pictures that note suitable points for blood-letting in reference to the signs of the zodiac.3 Some historians see this as proof that a familiarity with astrology would have been a prerequisite for the practice of learned medicine at the time.4 Without denying this, one might ask whether such books were not by the same token merely employing a simple mnemonic device in a period in which culture was still largely oral, thereby making it easier for students (and physicians) to remember the different phlebotomy points and their indications.5 Some have also suggested that the perception of the human body as subject to celestial influences reflects a sense of dependence upon the transcendent—the predominant view in the Middle Ages, in keeping with the Christian doctrine developed by the Catholic Church at the time.6 Whatever the reason, the microcosm metaphor undoubtedly occupied a central place in medieval medical representations of the human body.7 Figure 1 The human body as a house, from Tobias Cohen, Ma’aseh Tuviyah (1708), folio 106a. (Berman National Medical Library, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.) Conversely, the portrayal of the human body as a machine can be seen as the most significant mark of the changes that medicine underwent at the beginning of the modern era. The observation, quantification and calculation of forces have become an integral part of the study of the human body.8 This mechanistic representation can thus be seen as emblematic of the power that technology and science have afforded over the body in the modern era,9 even if the ancient conceptions persisted together with the new ones for a long time.10 Between the ancient cosmic conception and this new mechanical conception of the body, stand the renewal of dissections and the evolution of anatomical representations, both participating in the new visual culture of the Renaissance.11 We can thus ask whether Descartes’ (1596–1650) metaphor of the man-machine, later taken up by La Mettrie (1709–1751), offered the only possible alternative to the microcosm, or whether he simply adopted a concept that would later come to dominate all others.12 Even if the illustration in Ma'aseh Tuviyah cannot in itself provide a satisfactory answer to this question, it does supply evidence that such alternatives indeed existed, and highlights the importance of the social and cultural elements that underlie these representations. In this article, I will introduce the metaphor of the house employed by Tobias Cohen to represent the human body at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and attempt to determine its significance, drawing upon the book itself, and considering the spirit of the medical doctrine to which the author subscribed: that of iatrochemistry. This approach perceived the functions of the body in terms of a distillery, a fact which helps explain certain elements of the illustration. I will suggest that a metaphor of this kind also stems from the author's own communal experience. Thus, the fact that he does not employ just any house, but one that forms a part of the defensive walls of a fortified city, in my opinion evokes Tobias's Jewish communal experience at Padua in a less hostile environment by contrast to what he had experienced at Frankfurt-on-Oder.13 In order to demonstrate this, I will rely on elements of Tobias's personal history, appearing at the beginning of the book, on the author's remarks in the chapter devoted to pathology, in which the illustration appears, and on the Jewish sources used by Tobias in his text. The article is thus divided into three parts: a brief account of the author's life, followed by bibliographical information on the book in which the illustration appears, and finally, a discussion of the illustration itself, its function and its metaphorical significance.