Amra Li Em: La transmission de la médecine populaire par les femmes dans le Talmud

A number of women who had some knowledge or expertise in healing procedures are mentioned in the Talmud. We have centered our essay on Abbayé's step-mother, who might have been a midwife, and who made an impressive amount of statements on medical matters. We thus find toward the end of the treatise Shabbat seven brief aphorisms on the management of newborn babies having problems. Abbayé's stepmother also told him what should be done against scorpion bites, "heart" diseases, ear pains, several kinds of fever, and offered interesting remarks on the education of children and on sexual intercourse. A number of magical cures and devices are also mentioned, as described by Abbayé's step-mother. We further describe the encounter between Talmudists and foreign matrons. These expert women thus conveyed curing methods, mainly, though not only, based on popular lore, into the Talmudic Corpus. This demonstrates again that the Talmud is (also) a diversified mirror of contemporary Jewish society.