Maimonides, "Treatise on Rules Regarding the Practical Part of the Medical Art"

We are very pleased to offer to the reader this edition and translation of Maimonides’ treatise On Rules Regarding the Practical Part of the Medical Art. This treatise, extant as item 9 in a uinque MS DCI of the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid (formerly Escorial 888), fols. 109a-123a, is not mentioned in the recent bio-bibliographical literature. The great Jewish bibliographer Moritz Steinschneider identified the text in this manuscript as another copy of the treatise On Asthma und considered the title to be fictitious. However, from the introduction it is clear that it was written for the same patient for whom Maimonides wrote On Asthma and was meant to be part of that tract, although ill health prevented Maimonides from completing it at the time. He did eventually finish it, producing the text that we publish here. Maimonides’ Rules is an independent, authentic work that fits the mold of his medical writings. It is written in the fuṣūl format—short, self-standing paragraphs that Maimonides wrote down from time to time, later to be organized into a series of monographs and one large book, his Medical Aphorisms. However, there is a basic difference between some fuṣūl in this work and those found in Aphorisms. Here, some represent a kind of itemized account, consisting of numbered lists of medical issues far more comprehensive than those in Aphorisms. Thus, one is left with the impression that they are the result of a life of learning and practice. Especially noteworthy are the unique fuṣūl dealing with surgery performed on serious abdominal wounds, as it seems to reflect Maimonides’ experience with battlefield casualties.