Abstract 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.
Robert Jütte (Thu,) studied this question.