From my Notebooks: Medicine, Mechanics and Magic from Moses ben Judah Galeano's Taʿalumot Ḥokmah

Taʿalumot ḥoḵmah (Puzzles of wisdom), composed by Moses ben Judah Galeano around the year 1500, is one of the most idiosyncratic and historically interesting specimens of Hebrew scientific literature.¹ The book, written in Hebrew, survives in a unique manuscript, Cambridge University Library Add. 511,1. The author was a Jewish polymath who had close connections at the court of Bayazid II (1481-1512); his Taʿalumot reveals much about science at the court of that ruler. Galeano has left us works in Hebrew and Arabic on logic and astronomy in addition to the Taʿalumot. The last-named work, which furnishes the subject matter for this paper, presents itself as a catalogue of errors. Organized in ten sections, which the author labels ḥadarim 'chambers', each section groups together examples of similar errors of reasoning from different fields of knowledge: religion (including law, interpretation of scripture, and polemics), mechanics (or machinations; see below), medicine, astronomy, and astrology. Generally, Galeano begins each "chamber" with an explanation in logical terms of the error involved; this "fallacy" becomes the organizing principle of the chapter. Galeano had a special interest in logic and left us a number of as-yet unstudied treatises in that field.² However, the error in reasoning is very often the failure on the part of the patient or consumer to detect a simple deception. In other words, many of the cases recorded in the Taʿalumot are cases of plain fraud.

Medicine was, I think, Galeano's first calling. He chose the penname Mūsā Jālīnūs for his only known writing in Arabic, a still-unpublished monograph on astronomy, clearly punning on the Arabic spelling of Galen.³ From some of the selections below we learn of his service at the court of the sultan, his work in a māristān (hospital), and his connection to the qāḍī al-askar (chief judge of the army). In fact, in Galeano's day some Jewish physicians were commissioned to serve in the army.⁴ Perhaps Galeano served in this capacity, and this explains how he came to know high officials and to be so well-informed about court intrigues. Moreover, Galeano refers here to a hitherto unnoticed work of his, Sefer ha-Šorašim (Book of principles), which he calls "my medical questions." From the reference in Taʿalumot (93b-94a), we know that there he took up the question of computing the quantity of a drug required to achieve the desired result. Galeano complains that this factor, unlike the quality of the drug, is sorely neglected by his contemporaries in their prescriptions.

Taʿalumot ḥoḵmah is a catalogue of errors rather than a comprehensive survey of the scientific practice of the times; Galeano includes deception and fraud among the "logical" errors. Hence we should be careful about drawing conclusions as to how representative the practices described may be for medical practice at the time of Bayazid II. It seems clear that a wide variety of deceptions were practiced; still, Galeano makes no categorical statement about the medical practice of his time.⁵ Clearly, those engaged in court intrigues had the motivation to deceive and were not hindered by moral scruples. One may cautiously summarize that fraud was common enough but was not the rule.

The detailed interest in mechanics displayed in Taʿalumot ḥoḵmah is unique in the Hebrew literature of the period. Galeano describes several devices that he saw or constructed, including a spring-powered robot, whose description we include in this notice. We include some illuminating reports about magical practices as well.⁶

§1. Two Cases of Medical Intrigue at Court (MS CUL 10a-11a)

In the first of these cases it is not clear what was the motive for the intrigue. It could have been just simple fun. Perhaps the sultan welcomed the opportunity to test one of the court physicians. In the second case the ambitions were clearly material gain, social standing, political power, or all three. The "method...