Issachar Bär Teller’s Teller’s Beʼer Mayim ḥayim (1655) and the History of Early Yiddish Health Manuals

The first printed medical texts in Yiddish were only available from the first half of the 17 th century onwards. They are addressed to those Jews who were – for a lack of financial means – unable to consult a physician or barber-surgeon, or for various reasons were not used to do so, as they lived, in rural areas where there was no doctor, at least not an academically trained physician. A striking example of this genre is medical handbook written in Yiddish and published in Prague in 1655. Beʼer Mayim ḥayim ( Well-Spring of Living Waters ) was compiled by Issachar Bär Teller on the bases of various written sources and his own experience as barber-surgeon.