An Alternative to the Cosmic and Mechanic Metaphors for the Human Body? The House Illustration in Ma'aseh Tuviyah (1708)

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Medical History, 2008, 52: 93–105
An Alternative to the Cosmic and Mechanic Metaphors
for the Human Body? The House Illustration in
Ma’aseh Tuviyah (1708)
ETIENNE LEPICARD*
In Ma’aseh Tuviyah, a Hebrew medical treatise published in Venice at the dawn of the
eighteenth century, there is a magnificent illustration in which the human body is portrayed
as a house.
1
What was the function of such an illustration? What is its significance? In the
following article I will postulate that such an illustration would have served primarily as a
mnemonic device for (Jewish) students of medicine. It may also be seen, however, as a
possible alternative to the mechanistic vision that has dominated our conception of the
human body since the onset of the scientific revolut ion; an alternative with deep roots in
Hebrew culture as well that in ‘‘the arts of memory’’.
In medieval medical treatises, the body is often portrayed in relation to the universe as a
reflection of the heavenly bodies. Man is defined as a ‘‘little world’’ or microcosm, and the
universe that he reflects as a ‘‘great world’’ or macrocosm
2
—as, for example, in such
pictures that note suitable points for blood-letting in reference to the signs of the zodiac.
3
Some historians see this as proof that a familiarity with astrology would have been a
prerequisite for the practice of learned medicine at the time.
4
Without denying this, one
might ask whether such books were not by the same token merely employing a simple
# Etienne Lepicard 2008
* Etienne Lepicard, MD, PhD, Sackler School of
Medicine, Tel-Aviv University. At present: Research
Fellow, Institute for the History of Medicine, Justus-
Liebig-University of Giessen, Germany; and Guest
Lecturer, Program in Biological Thought, Open
University, Israel; e-mail: etiennel@netvision.net.il
A previous version of this paper was presented at ASA
Decennial Conference: ‘Anthropology and Science’,
Manchester, UK, 14–18 July 2003; and in poster form
at the 38th International Congress on the History of
Medicine, Istanbul, Turkey, 1–6 September 2002 and
at the 4th Research Fair of Sackler Faculty of
Medicine, 14 April 2003. This paper has greatly
benefited from the comments of many participants to
these sessions and especially those of my colleague
at Tel Aviv University, Yehiel Barilan, on the works
of Frances Yates and Mary Carruthers on the arts
of memory. Special thanks are due to Shmuel
Sermoneta-Gertel for his English translation, and to
Reuven Bonfil, from the Hebrew University, and
to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful
comments.
1
Tobias Cohen, Ma’aseh Tuviyah, Venice, 1708,
folio 106a.
2
For an overview on the analogy between micro-
and macrocosm, see George Boas, ‘Macrocosm and
Microcosm’, in Philip P Wiener (ed.), Dictionary of
the history of ideas, 5 vols, New York, Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1973–74, vol. 3, pp. 126–31. On the
history of the idea in Jewish thought, see Zvi Almog,
‘Critical edition of Moses Ibn Tibbon’s ’Olam Katan
with an essay on the history of microcosm in medieval
Jewish philosophy’ (PhD Dissertation), Philadelphia,
Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning,
1966, and more recently: Jacob Haberman,
‘Introduction’, in Saul Horowitz, The microcosm of
Joseph ibn Saddiq, Madison, NJ, Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press; London, Associated University
Presses, c.2003.
3
‘The stars and the human body,’ in Apocalypse,
ca. 1420, fol. 41r, MS 49, Wellcome Library, London,
reproduced in Nancy G Siraisi, Medieval and early
Renaissance medicine: an introduction to knowledge
and practice, University of Chicago Press, 1990,
p. 112. This picture is also accessible online under
‘‘zodiac man’’ at http://medphoto.wellcome.ac.uk/
4
Siraisi, ibid., pp. 67–8.
93

Figure 1: The human body as a house, from Tobias Cohen, Ma’aseh Tuviyah (1708), folio 106a.
(Berman National Medical Library, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.)
94

mnemonic device in a period in which culture was still largely oral, thereby making it
easier for students (and physicians) to remember the different phlebotomy points and their
indications.
5
Some have also suggested that the perception of the human body as subject to
celestial influences reflects a sense of dependence upon the transcendent—the predomi-
nant view in the Middle Ages, in keeping with the Christian doctrine developed by the
Catholic Church at the time.
6
Whatever the reason, the microcosm metaphor undoubtedly
occupied a central place in medieval medical representations of the human body.
7
Conversely, the portrayal of the human body as a machine can be seen as the most
significant mark of the changes that medicine underwent at the beginning of the modern era.
The observation, quantification and calculation of forces have become an integral part of the
study of the human body.
8
This mechanistic representation can thus be seen as emblematic
of the power that technology and science have afforded over the body in the modern era,
9
even if the ancient conceptions persisted together with the new ones for a long time.
10
Between the ancient cosmic conception and this new mechanical conception of the body,
stand the renewal of dissections and the evolution of anatomical representations, both
participating in the new visual culture of the Renaissance.
11
We can thus ask whether
Descartes’ (1596–1650) metaphor of the man-machine, later taken up by La Mettrie
(1709–1751), offered the only possible alternative to the microcosm, or whether he simply
adopted a concept that would later come to dominate all others.
12
Even if the illustration in
Ma’aseh Tuviyah cannot in itself provide a satisfactory answer to this question, it does
supply evidence that such alternatives indeed existed, and highlights the importance of the
social and cultural elements that underlie these representations.
5
Frances A Yates, The art of memory, University
of Chicago Press, 1974 (1966), especially pp. 51–4 for
the use of the Zodiac by Metrodorus of Skepsis. More
recently, see the works of Mary Carruthers, The book
of memory and The craft of thought, both published by
Cambridge University Press, 1990 and 1998
respectively. For an exploration of the art of memory
‘‘hidden in the rhetoric of more recent forms of
intellectual discourse’’, see Patrick H Hutton, ‘The art
of memory reconceived: from rhetoric to
psychoanalysis’, J. Hist. Ideas, 1987, 48: 371–92. In
this article, Hutton suggests that the art of memory was
not only a way to remember but also a way of
representing and so of knowing the world.
6
A Synnott, The body social: symbolism, self and
society, London, Routledge, 1993, pp. 22–7.
7
In the West, of course. For a comparison with
China on blood-letting, see, for instance, Shigehisa
Kuriyama, The expressiveness of the body and the
divergence of Greek and Chinese medicine, New
York, Zone Books, 1999; pp. 201–7.
8
Mirko D Grmek and Raffaele Barnabeo, ‘La
machine du corps’, in M D Grmek and B Fantini (eds),
Histoire de la pense
´
eme
´
dicale en Occident, vol. 2, De
la Renaissance aux Lumi

eres, Paris, Seuil, 1997,
pp. 7–36; Yves Gingras, Peter Keating, Camille
Limoges, Du scribe au savant. Les porteurs du savoir
de l’antiquite
´
a
`
la re
´
volution industrielle, Paris, PUF,
2000, especially ch. 9, pp. 289–329.
9
See Synnott, op. cit., note 6 above. See also
Alfred W Crosby, The measure of reality:
quantification and western society, 1250–1600,
Cambridge University Press, 1997.
10
Andrew Wear cites here the example of Harvey
versus Descartes. See, Andrew Wear, ‘Medicine in
early modern Europe, 1500–1700’, in L I Conrad,
M Neve, V Nutton, R Porter, A Wear, The
western medical tradition 800
BC to AD 1800,
Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 215–361,
on pp. 335–6.
11
See Andrea Carlino, ‘Representing the body: the
visual culture of Renaissance anatomy’, in his Paper
bodies: a catalogue of anatomical fugitive sheets
1538–1687, Medical History, Supplement no. 19,
London, Wellcome Institute for the History of
Medicine, 1999, pp. 5–45.
12
The term ‘‘metaphor’’ is used here for both the
cosmic and mechanistic conceptions of the body rather
than in the usual relatively narrow rhetorical sense.
I thus point to its broader anthropological signification
as one of the ‘‘mechanisms of the mind’’, i.e. ‘‘Our
ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both
think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in
nature.’’ See George Lakoff and Mark Johnson,
95
The House Illustration in Ma’aseh Tuviyah (1708)

In this article, I will introduce the metaphor of the house employed by Tobias Cohen to
represent the human body at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and attempt to
determine its significance, drawing upon the book itself, and considering the spirit of
the medical doctrine to which the auth or subscribed: that of iatrochemistry. This approach
perceived the functions of the body in terms of a distillery, a fact which helps explain
certain elements of the illustration. I will suggest that a metaphor of this kind also stems
from the author’s own communal experience. Thus, the fact that he does not employ just
any house, but one that forms a part of the defensive walls of a forti fied city, in my opinion
evokes Tobias’s Jewish communal experience at Padua in a less hostile environment by
contrast to what he had experienced at Frankfurt-o n-Oder.
13
In order to demonstrate this, I
will rely on elements of Tobias’s personal history, appearing at the beginning of the book,
on the author’ s remar ks in the chapter devoted to pathology, in which the illustration
appears, and on the Jewish sources used by Tobias in his text. The article is thus divided
into three parts: a brief account of the author’s life, followed by bibliographical information
on the book in which the illustration appears, and finally, a discussion of the illustration
itself, its function and its metaph orical significance.
Biography of Tobias Cohen (1652–1729)
Almost everything we know about Tobias Cohen is gleaned from his own book.
14
One of
the most recent accounts of Tobias and Ma’aseh Tuviyah is that of David Ruderman in his
book: Jewish thought and scientific discovery in early modern Europe.
15
Tobias was born in Metz in 1 652, into a learned Jewish family. His grandfather, Eleazar
Cohen, emigrated from Safed (then in the Ottoman province of Damascus), to settle in
Cracow (Poland), where he studied medicine. His father, Moses, was both a physician and a
rabbi. He migrated to France at the onset of the persecutions instigated by the Cossack
leader Bogdan Chmielnicki in 1648.
16
Following the death of his father, when he was nine
years old, Tobias was sent back to Cracow, where he received a traditional Jewish
education.
At the age of twenty-five, accompanied by his friend Gabriel Felix of Brody, Tobias
went to study medicine at Frankfurt-on-Oder. Soon, however, the discrimination the two
friends suffered drove them to abandon Frankfurt for a more open university: that of Padua,
near Venice.
17
In Padua they attende d the preparatory school for Jewish medical students
Metaphors we live by, University of Chicago Press,
1980, p. 3.
13
When speaking about ‘‘hostile environment’’,
I am referring to what Tobias tells us in his book about
his own experience, and the explanation he gives for
his moving from Frankfurt-on-Oder to Padua together
with his friend, Gabriel Felix of Brody. I have no
intention, however, of entering into the actual
historiographical debate about this issue.
14
Tobias Cohen, Ma’aseh Tuviyah (in Hebrew),
first edition, Venice, 1708.
15
David B Ruderman, Jewish thought and
scientific discovery in early modern Europe, Detroit,
Wayne State University Press, 2001(c. 1995),
pp. 100–17, 229–55. For biographic information, see
also J O Leibowitz, ‘Tobie Cohen, auteur me
´
dical de
langue he
´
bra
€
ıque (1652–1729)’, Revue d’Histoire de
la Me
´
decine He
´
bra
€
ıque, 1964, 63: 15–24.
16
See S A Goldberg and A Derczansky, ‘Les juifs
du moyen
^
age a
`
nos jours: monde Achkenaze’, in
S A Goldberg (ed.), Dictionnaire encyclope
´
dique du
juda€ısme, Paris, Du Cerf, 1993, pp. 1288–332, on
pp. 1297–8.
17
For general background on the University of
Padua, see J J Bylebyl ‘The school of Padua:
humanistic medicine in the sixteenth century’, in
96
Etienne Lepicard

founded by Solomon Conegliano (1642–1719)—himself a graduate of the city’s medical
university.
18
Tobias and Gabriel obtained their doctorates in medicine and philosophy at
Padua in 1683,
19
and Tobias went on to become a physician at the Sultan’s court, residing
at Adrianople and Constantinople (present-day Edirne and Istanbul respectively), before
retiring to Jerusalem in 1715, where he lived until his death in 1729.
20
This family saga, from Safed to Poland, France, Italy, the Ottoman empire, and finally
Jerusalem, resembles the experie nces of many European Jewish savants of the early
modern period.
21
European conflicts—such as the intellectual and cultural challenges
that marked the development of new sciences in a period of uncertaint y and constant
change—resonate in Tobias’s work.
Bibliography of Ma’aseh Tuviyah, 1708
Tobias’s book is an encyclopaedic work in two main parts—one devoted to theology and
scientific knowledge in general, and the other to medicine.
22
According to the text on the
frontispiece, which bears a portrait of Tobias, the manuscript would appear to have been
completed in 1700. The publication licence from the University of Padua however—issued
by the Franciscans and appearing at the end of the book—is dated 7 June 1708. One of the
letters in the book’s introdu ction would seem to suggest that the discrepancy between the
two dates is related to the role played by Solomon Conegliano, who was, at Tobias’s behest,
responsible for its publication in Venice.
23
C Webster (ed), Health, medicine and mortality in the
sixteenth century, Cambridge University Press, 1979,
pp. 335–70; and Brendan Dooley, ‘Science teaching as
a career at Padua in the early eighteenth century: the
case of Giovanni Poleni’, History of Universities,
1984, 4: 115–41. For the Jewish context, see David B
Ruderman, ‘The impact of science on Jewish culture
and society in Venice (with special reference to Jewish
graduates of Padua’s medical school)’, in David B
Ruderman (ed.), Essential papers on Jewish culture in
Renaissance and Baroque Italy, New York University
Press, 1992, pp. 519–53.
18
Ruderman, op. cit., note 15 above, pp. 111–12.
See also the document published by Dubnov asserting
that Tobias registered as a Polish Jew living in the
ghetto: ‘‘(1681.30.XII.). Il Sigr. Tobia Moschide ...
hebreo Polacco, sum [sic] primo anno di studio in
Padova, habita in Ghetto, matricolato d’ordine dell’
Eccel. Sigr. Capitaneo.’’ Simon Dubnov, ‘Jewish
students at the University of Padova (in the seventeenth
and eighteenth century)’, Sefer hashana lihude
America (in Hebrew), 1931, 1: 216–19, on p. 219.
19
D Kaufmann, ‘Trois docteurs de Padoue:
Tobias Moschides, Gabriel Selig B. Mose
´
, Isak
Wallich’, Revue des Etudes Juives, 1889, 18: 293–8;
Daniel Carpi, ‘Jewish graduates of the University
of Padua during the sixteenth century’ (in Hebrew),
in idem, Between Renaissance and ghetto: essays on
the history of the Jews in Italy in the fourteenth
and seventeenth centuries (in Hebrew), Tel
Aviv, University Publishing Project,
1989, pp. 96–130.
20
For background, see, for example, J Hacker,
‘The intellectual activity of the Jews of the Ottoman
empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries’, in I Twersky and B Septimus (eds), Jewish
thought in the seventeenth century, Cambridge MA,
Harvard University Press, 1987, pp. 95–135. I would
like to point out the excellent, as yet unpublished work
of a younger colleague of mine at the University of
Tel-Aviv: Y Ecker, ‘Jewish physicians in the Ottoman
empire as agents of cultural transfer, 1650–1750’
(in Hebrew), and to thank him for having allowed me
to read it.
21
For example, we could cite Yerushalmi’s classic
study on another such Jewish physician, Isaac
Cardoso: Y H Yerushalmi, From Spanish court to
Italian ghetto: Isaac Cardoso: a study in seventeenth-
century Marranism and Jewish apologetics, New
York, Columbia University Press, 1971.
22
In effect, following the part devoted to medicine
proper, there are further chapters, presented as
independent sections. These sections, however, are
not as extensive as the first two parts, and in any event
are all related to medicine.
23
Solomon Conegliano, ‘Preface to Ma’aseh
Tuviyah’ (in Hebrew), in Tobias Cohen, Ma’aseh
Tuviyah, Venice, 1708. It is not unusual to find 1707 as
97
The House Illustration in Ma’aseh Tuviyah (1708)

According to Ruderman, the work was printed five times at Venice between 1708 and
1850, followed by seven further editions published elsewhere—most recently in Brooklyn,
New York, in 1974, and in Jerusalem, in 1967 and 1978. Ruderman thus characterizes
Ma’aseh Tuviyah as ‘‘the most influential early modern Hebrew textbook of the sciences,
especially medicine’’.
24
One of the book’s main characteristics is its attempt to associate the ‘‘new sciences’’
with the traditional Jewish view of science in general and medicine in particular. As we
have noted, the book is organized in encyclopaedic fashion. The first part comprises five
chapters: ‘The Upper World’ (corresponding more or less to metaphysics), ‘The World of
the Spheres’ (astronomy), ‘The Lower World’ (geography), ‘The Little World’ or ‘Micro-
cosm’ (ethnography), and ‘The Found ations of the World’ (alchemy). The second part
comprises three main chapters: ‘A New Land’, ‘A New House’ and ‘The House Watch’ or
‘Guard’. This corresponds to the traditional division of medical texts into three parts:
physiology, pathology and therapy (limited here to hygiene). A third part includes: ‘A
Garden Enclosed’ (gynaecology and obstetric s), ‘Fruit of the Womb’ (paediatrics), and ‘A
Fountain Sealed’ (on sterility). It should be noted that while the chapter titles in the first
part of the book relate to the idea of the ‘‘world’’, and those of the second part to the theme
of novelty and the house, the headings in the third part all derive from the Bible, parti-
cularly the Song of Songs.
25
The book also includes a section on medical botany and a list
of remedies.
26
Iconography of Human Anatomy: The House Metaphor
Another important feature of the book is the scientific and medical illustrations it
provides. As the British medical historian Nigel Allan remarked, Ma’aseh Tuviyah is
‘‘one of the first books printed in Hebrew to do so’’.
27
These are especially beautiful
in the editio princeps. Clearly done by a professional artist, a careful examination of the
book and its main illustrations did not, however, provide any indication of who this person
could have been. Further research is obviously needed here.
28
the date of publication. The date of the publication
licence can help resolve a debate I believe to be due to
the fact that the Hebrew date (tav-samekh-zayin –
5467) can correspond both to 1707 and to 1708. For the
date 1707, see, for example, Leibowitz, op. cit., note
15 above, p. 15; and Ruderman, op. cit., note 15 above,
p. 229. For 1708, see D A Friedman, ‘Tuviyah Katz,
the physician’, in Kovetz Refui (in Hebrew), 1940:
33–43; and N Allan, ‘A Jewish physician in the
seventeenth century’, Med. Hist., 1984, 28: 324–8,
especially p. 326.
24
Ruderman, op. cit., note 15 above, p. 229.
25
Song of Songs 4:12 for ‘‘a garden enclosed’’
and ‘‘a fountain sealed’’; and Genesis 30:2 or Isaiah
13:18 for ‘‘fruit of the womb’’.
26
See note 22 above.
27
Allan, op. cit., note 23 above, p. 326.
28
A possibility would be to identify the press in
which the book was printed in order to discover who its
illustrators were and if there was collaboration
between them and the author, or perhaps with
Conegliano, who was in charge of bringing the book to
the press (see note 23 above). I wish to thank here one
of the anonymous reviewers for this suggestion of
further research. Also the architectural style of the
house has not been researched in spite of the historical
data which might well be drawn from it. I focus rather
on the metaphorical significance of the illustration and
its possible alternative status to better known
metaphors of the body as the microcosm and the
machine.
98
Etienne Lepicard

The illustration presented here follows the introduction to the chapter on p athology
in the medical part of the book, the section entitled ‘ A New H ouse’. The introduction
and its accompanying illustration serve as a prologue to the material presented in the
chapter itself, following a a capite ad calcem (head to foot) order—in use at least since
the times of Avicenna,
29
and especially conducive to the invention of mnemonic
devices.
30
To the left of the illustration, is the figure of a man with open chest and abdomen, so that
the principal internal organs are visible. A Hebrew scroll separates this figure from that of a
house comprising four floors,
31
to the right of the illustration. In accordance with common
practice in anatomy texts of the period, the organs are marked with letters, for reference
purposes.
32
On the scroll, the letters, in alphabetical order, are followed by the name of the
designated part of the house, and that of the corresponding organ. The face of the man is
intact, giving the figure as a whole an animated expression. It is worth noting that only the
principal internal organs are represented.
Following a brief introduction, the text on the page preceding the illustration
further develops the metaphor presented on the scroll. At first glance, one might
think that Tobias had failed to incorporate Harvey’s r evolutionary explanation of the
role of the heart in the circulatory system, because at the centre of the illustration
stands a steaming cauldron, calling to mind the ancient representation of the heart as
the place in which the blood is warmed. Upon careful examination however, the
reference letters and accompanying text clea rly reveal that the c auldron is located in
the kitchen of the house, corres ponding to the stomach , whereas the heart is situated
on the floor above, hidden behind a latticew ork grille. This place is worthy of the
‘‘master of the house’’, as Tobias terms the heart, where it can benefit from fresh air
without being too exposed.
33
The ‘‘kitchen’’ level below corresponds to the bodily
functions as understood at the time by the adherents of iatrochemistry, a school of
thought Tobias appears to have held in great esteem, which focused primarily on
processes such as effervescence and fermentation as the basis of physiology.
34
29
See Siraisi, op. cit., note 3 above, pp. 84–5.
30
On the order of presenting the material in early-
modern anatomical treatises, see Rafael Mandressi, Le
regard de l’anatomiste: dissections et invention du
corps en occident, Paris, Seuil, 2003, especially pp.
118–132. Mandressi shows the progressive evolution
from a presentation following the order of dissection
to one following the order of composition (by
which term he means, a theoretically reconstituted
order).
31
According to Mandressi, the traditional
presentation was a three ‘‘bellies’’ one—venter
inferior (abdomen), venter medius (thorax), venter
superior (head). Mandressi, ibid., pp. 117–21. Here
only the abdomen and thorax are open but are divided,
nevertheless, into three storeys.
32
S Kusukawa, ‘Illustrating nature’, in
M Frasca-Spada, and N Jardine (eds), Books and
the sciences in history, Cambridge University Press,
2000, pp. 90–113.
33
On the incorporation of Harvey’s revolution in
the work of Tobias, see J O Leibowitz ‘Harveian items
in Hebrew medicine’, Harofe
´
HaIvri (English part of
the current edition), 1957, 30(2): 134–8 (English part
of Annual combined Israel edition, 1957, 30: 229–33).
34
M Lindemann, Medicine and society in early
modern Europe, Cambridge University Press, 1999,
p. 79. Ruderman, op. cit., note 15 above, pp. 244–9.
See also A G Debus, ‘La me
´
decine chimique’, in
Grmek and Fantini (eds), op. cit., note 8 above, vol. 2,
pp. 37–59, and, of course, his classic study:
A G Debus, The chemical philosophy : Paracelsian
science and medicine in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, New York, Science History Publications,
1977.
99
The House Illustration in Ma’aseh Tuviyah (1708)

Regarding the origin of the metaphor of the house itself, some historians have sugges ted
that it can be found in Harvey’s Prelectiones anatomie universalis: lectures delivered in
1616 at the College of Physicians in London.
35
I do not believe any direct influence can be
proven, but that recourse to a common metaphor should be attribut ed to a common
source, such as a mnemonic device in use at the time, which Tobias enriched with his
own cultural background. Apart from Harvey, the house metaphor had already been
employed before Tobias by the great poet John Donne. Although mutual inspiration
between John Donne and William Harvey seems very likely,
36
since they were contem-
poraries, such a source of inspiration would appear to be too far removed from Tobias to
sustain this point of view. Certainly, Tobias cites Harvey and his heart theory, but the
metaphor is far from central to Harvey’s work, as it is in that of Tobias. For Harvey, in
effect, the metaphor appears in a fragmented fashion over a number of lectures: the thorax
as the ‘‘parlour’’ appears on folio 4, the stomach as ‘‘kitchen’’ or ‘‘shop’’ on folio 6, while
he speaks of ‘‘furnaces to draw away phlegm, rayse the spirit’’ on folio 24.
37
Finally, one
can ask whether Harvey’s lectures could have reached Tobias at all, as they were not
published in book form, to the best of my knowledge, until the late nineteenth century; a
fact which, if confirmed, would further prove the tenuousness of the theory that Harvey
exerted a direct influence on Tobias, and would require another explanation for the
appearance of this metaphor in the works of both authors.
38
It is important to note here that both Harvey and Tobias studied at Padua. Harvey
spent two years there at the beginning of the seventeenth century and, as we have seen,
Tobias graduated from the university in 1683.
39
At Pad ua, the medical curriculum
combined the new discoveries in the field of anatomy with study of the classics, such
as Galen’s Ars medica and Avicenna’s Canon,
40
which explains the fact that Tobias’s
writings reflect both classical and contemporary influences. Whatever the case , it appears
correct to say that this metaphor is well suited to the development of the study of human
anatomy and its representation in the baroque period, alongside more traditional repre-
sentations deriving from the classical approach to remembering knowledge. As Frances
Yates first showed in The art of memory, people have used architectural devices as aids to
memory ever since antiquity.
41
The pedagogical purpose of Tobias’s work should be
stressed here. Without addressing the entire issue of the reasons behind Tobias’s decision
to write his book in Hebrew, it seems quite clear that he wanted to bring the benefits of the
35
Leibowitz, op. cit., note 15 above; and Allan, op.
cit., note 23 above.
36
F N L Poynter, ‘John Donne and William
Harvey’, J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 1960, 15: 233–46.
37
William Harvey, Prelectiones anatomiae
universalis, (Lumleian Lectures, 1616) facsimile
edition, London, J & A Churchill, 1886; new edition
and translation by G Whitteridge, Edinburgh, E & S
Livingstone, 1964. See also William Harvey, Lectures
on the whole of anatomy, an annotated translation of
Prelectiones anatomiae universalis, by C D O’Malley,
F N L Poynter, K F Russell, Berkeley, University of
California Press, 1961.
38
Wilson presents them as ‘‘lecture notes intended
not for publication but to be read by their author while
he conducted public dissections’’. See L Wilson,
‘William Harvey’s Prelectiones: the performance of
the body in the Renaissance theater of anatomy’,
Representations, 1987, 17: 62–95, on p. 62.
39
See note 19 above.
40
Bylebyl, op. cit., note 17 above, pp. 368–9.
41
See note 5 above.
100
Etienne Lepicard

new sci ence and the new medicine to students from his own people. One can ask whether
Tobias’s book could not perhaps directly reflect the lectures he had himself heard at
Conegliano’s school. Or even, whether he was commanded by his master to write
down these lectures in a textbook form. In any case the pedagogical intention seems
clear and it is thus not surprising that the author employs mnemonic devices borr owed
from the world of arch itecture and oral culture, while presenting himself as a prophet
of learned and literate culture.
42
Moreover, in Hebrew, we can suppose that Tobias h ad
access to the treatise on rhetoric published by Rabbi Judah alias Messer Leon in Mantua
around 1475, one of the first books in Hebrew ever publishe d.
43
Having compared the
manuscripts and the Mantua edition, Rabinowitz even suggests that the book was
written first and foremost for medical students as rhetoric was part of their curriculum.
44
A further study would have to follow a closer comparison between the teaching of memory
in Messer Leon’s book and the way Tobias has built the body–house mnemonic device
presented here.
45
Similarly, the analogy drawn since antiquity between architecture and its canons and the
human body is certainly worthy of further study in this context.
46
Nevertheless, if one
wishes to understand the full sense of the metaphor employed by Tobias, it is important to
note both the title of the chapter, ‘A New House’, and the meaning he ascribes to it in the
introduction. In his prefatory remarks, Tobias writes as follows:
... The Sages of old called man a Microcosm.
47
And that was in the early generations when they
were of great stature and their strength was great and their lives
48
long, and their wisdom vast. And
when King Solomon of blessed memory perceived in his wisdom that their strength was expired
and their lives shortened and their wisdom lost, he compared man to a city,
49
saying ‘‘there was a
42
See pp. 103–4 below for further discussion of
the relationship which existed between Tobias Cohen
and Salomon Conegliano.
43
Judah Messer Leon, The book of the
honeycomb’s flow: Sepher Nophet Suphim, a critical
edition and translation by Isaac Rabinowitz, Ithaca
and London, Cornell University Press, 1983
(hereafter Rabinowitz, JML). Two years earlier a
facsimile edition of the first edition was published in
Jerusalem: Judah Messer Leon, Nofet Zufim on
Hebrew Rhetoric, Mantua ca. 1475, with an
introduction by Robert Bonfil, Jerusalem, The
Jewish National and University Library and the
Magness Press (The Hebrew University), 1981.
(hereafter Bonfil, JML). The Mantua edition of
Messer Leon’s book was digitalized and is now
online at http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/books/html/
bk1929127.htm. On Rabbi Judah Messer Leon,
see (in Hebrew) Daniel Carpi, ‘Notes on the life
of Rabbi Judah Messer Leon’, in Carpi, op. cit.,
note 19 above, pp. 57–84. Note that the Hebrew title
of this article is ‘R. Judah Messer Leon and his
activity as physician’. I would like to thank Reuven
(Robert) Bonfil for bringing this work to my
attention.
44
See Rabinowitz, JML, Messer Leon’s Preface,
p. 11, n. 12.
45
Messer Leon explicitly suggests using ‘‘houses
and upper stories’’ as backgrounds for the figures one
wants to remember. See Rabinowitz, JML, bk 1,
ch. 13.
46
See, for example, J Rykwert, The dancing
column: on order in architecture, Cambridge, MA,
MIT Press, 1996, especially pp. 56–90. I would like to
thank Andrea Carlino for having drawn my attention
to this work. See also Mandressi who has devoted a
whole chapter of his book on this issue but without
referring to issues of memory. Mandressi, op. cit.,
note 30 above, pp. 111–32.
47
Literally ‘‘little world’’. The capital letters,
here and elsewhere in the passage, are meant to
render typographical accentuations in Tobias’s
original text.
48
Literally ‘‘their days’’.
49
Literally ‘‘took man up the hill to the city’’,
perhaps an allusion to the fact that Solomon built the
Temple on the heights of Davidic Jerusalem. The
Temple is also simply referred to as ‘‘The House’’, and
the offerings made there as ‘‘risings’’. The
terminology employed is thus rich with traditional
connotations.
101
The House Illustration in Ma’aseh Tuviyah (1708)

Little City, etc.’’ [Ecclesiastes 9:14]. And I, of little worth, laid to my heart
50
to enquire what good
is it to man that he be compared
51
to a Microcosm or a City, even a Little City. It is enough that he
be as one of the towers or houses among the dwellings of a walled city,
52
as bars and gates,
53
as I
have shown you the pattern of the house and the pattern of its instruments, as the House of the
Soul,
54
for he has lower, second and a third stories, and an attic and roof above, and walls round
about, and corners of the house. And so the wise among the physicians have divided man into three
parts and areas, and these are the head, the chest and the abdomen.
55
This passage cites three stages in the development of the ‘‘architectural’’ metaphor for the
human body: first, the human body was compared to a little world, a microcosm, then
Solomon compared it to a little city, and finally, Tobias, humblest of all, maintained that it is
sufficient to compare the human body to a tower or a house among the dwellings of a walled
city. We will come back to this final comparison, but we must first ask ourselves: who are
these Sages of old, and who is this king, Solomon? In order to answer these questions let us
first examine the Jewish background of Tobias’s statement, and then take a closer look at his
personal experiences, as he himself describes them, in various parts of the book.
‘‘ Great stature’’ would appear to refer to the giants of chapter 6 in the book of
Genesis, who are said to have descended from the heavens and taken unto them the
daughters of men.
56
These giants however, appear in another biblical narrative, more
significant for the work of Tobias. Following the exodus from Egypt, Moses sent repre-
sentatives of each tribe to visit the Promised Land to assess the strength of its inhabitants.
Upon their return, the majority of the emissaries spoke of the giants they had encountered
there, and the Israelites, terrified by their account, com plained to Moses and threatened to
return to Egypt.
57
This allusion to the biblical giants is reinforced by the reference (not
translated here) that Tobias himself makes at the beginning of this passage, to his intro-
duction to the fourth chapter of the first part of the book. In this chapter, entitled ‘Micro-
cosm’, Tobias presents a compendium of knowledge on the subject of man—the
ethnographical or anthropological data of the day, so to speak. An entire section is devoted
to giants, beginning with the archaeological digs, particularly in Salonika, with which the
50
Tobias uses the exact phrase with which the
biblical chapter he has just cited begins: Ecclesiastes 9:1.
51
Literally ‘‘taken up and even raised’’.
52
This expression, ‘‘dwellings of a walled city’’
(in Hebrew: ‘‘batei ‘ir homa’’) is a halakhic category.
See below for a discussion of its use in this context. For
the sources employed by Tobias, I used the Responsa
Project CD-ROM, Version 11 þ , Bar Ilan University,
1972–2003, which also includes all the published
volumes of Encyclopaedia Talmudica (in Hebrew),
vol. 1–25, Jerusalem, Yad Harav Herzog, 1947–2002;
see under ‘‘Batei ‘Ir Homa’’, vol. 5.
53
A biblical expression (e.g., Deuteronomy 3, 5; I
Samuel 23:7; etc.) that reinforces the idea of a fortress.
54
In Hebrew, ‘‘beit hanefesh’’. This expression
appears only once in the Bible (Isaiah 3:20), in a list of
women’s adornments. See below for an interpretation
of its use in Ma’aseh Tuviyah.
55
Cohen, op. cit., note 1 above, folio 105a.
56
Genesis 6:4.
57
Numbers 13:1–14, 35; and Deuteronomy
1:19–40.
102
Etienne Lepicard

author was familiar.
58
On the other hand, Tobias’s reference to those who compare man to a
Microcosm, seems to invoke the origins of scientific knowledge
59
—which, according to
Tobias’s adversaries at Frankfurt-on-Oder, could not be found among the Jews.
60
In Jewish sources, gian ts are traditionally referred to by seven different names. In part
one, chapter four, section three, Tobias cites two of these: ‘‘nefilim’’ and ‘‘refaim’’. The
latter word, which also signifies ‘‘physicians’’, albeit with a slightly different inflexion,
might provide a further argument in favour of viewing scientific knowledge of the Pro-
mised Land as the object of all the author’s desi res, and the teachers at Frankfurt as
embodying the giants barring his way.
61
The references to King Solomon can also be
seen as relating to the origins of scientific know ledge. In fact, they recall a well-known
Talmudic lege nd that Solomon himself wrote a ‘‘Book of Remedies’’, later suppressed by
King Hezekiah.
62
The ‘‘little city’’ mentioned in our text is taken from Ecclesiastes, a book
of wisdom attributed to Solomon—further evidence that the Solomon mentioned here is
indeed the son of David.
63
I believe however, that the text can also be read on an entirely
different plane.
64
There was another Solomon, closer to Tobias, who could just as easily have fitted
the description here: Solomon Conegliano. At Padua, medical students were organized
by ‘‘nation’’, it is not clear, however, whether the Jews constituted one independant
group as Dubnov sustained it, but in any case they coul d have used structures devel-
oped by local Jew s.
65
Conegliano was a Jewish physician, who had graduated from
Padua and founded a preparatory school for Jewish medical students, attended by
Tobias and his friend Gabriel upon their arrival in the city.
66
In the introduction to
his book, immediately following a description of the difficulties he encountered at
Frankfurt and the accusations he had faced there, Tobias calls Solomon Conegliano
58
Cohen, op. cit., note 1 above, first part, ch. 4,
‘Microcosm’, section 3.
59
The term microcosm, little world, is neither
biblical nor talmudic. It appears, however, in the
Midrash and medieval commentaries, e.g. Midrash
Tanhuma, Pekudei, 3; or Ibn Ezra (Tudela, 1089–
1164) in his commentary on Genesis 1:26. For further
study, see references note 2 above. On the importance
of neologisms in characterizing the debut of scientific
literature in Hebrew, see Y T Langernan, ‘On the
beginnings of Hebrew scientific literature and on
studying history through ‘‘Maqbilot’’ (Parallels)’, in
Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism,
2002, 2: 169–89.
60
Cohen, op. cit., note 1 above, folio 6a.
61
Ibid., and on the names of the giants in Jewish
sources, see, for example, Midrash bereshit rabba,
critical ed. by J Theodor and C Albeck, Jerusalem,
1965, 26, 4.
62
Mishnah Pesahim 4,9; Talmud Bavli (hereafter
TB), Berakhot 10b, TB Pesahim 56a. See Ruderman,
op. cit., note 15 above, p. 379.
63
Ecclesiastes 9:14.
64
Another context worth exploring would be the
‘‘Quarrel between the ancients and the moderns’’, in
which the dwarf–giant metaphor was often used. But
this is a task beyond the scope of this article. For a
thorough introduction to this context within Medieval
and Renaissance Jewish thought, however, see
Abraham Melamed, On the shoulder of giants: the
debate between moderns and ancients in medieval
and Renaissance Jewish thought (in Hebrew), Ramat-
Gan, Bar-Ilan University Press, 2003. The author
dedicates a section of the book to Tobias, which is
entitled: ‘R. Tobias the Physician, the scientific
superiority of the moderns’, ibid., pp. 226–32. Quite
surprisingly Melamed begins the section saying (in a
free translation) ‘‘It is not a matter of chance that he
[Tobias] has no need of the metaphor of the dwarf and
the giant’’.
65
See Jacob Shatzky, ‘On Jewish medical students
of Padua’, J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 1950, 5: 444–7, on
p. 446. This point is also discussed by Ruderman, op.
cit., note 15 above, pp. 108–9.
66
Ruderman, op. cit., note 15 above, pp. 111–12.
103
The House Illustration in Ma’aseh Tuviyah (1708)

‘‘prince among philosophers and mighty among physicians’’.
67
I therefore suggest that
the young Jewish student may have seen in Solomon Conegliano the only one to have
confronted the force of the giants, and dissolved the magic of their wisdom, restoring
his [Tobias’s] own dignity and self-confidence. Solomon Conegliano convinced Tobias
that scientific knowledge can exist among Jews, and that it can co-exist with the world
of the Torah. On a very practical leve l, the three stages of development of this
‘‘architectural/mnemonic’’ metaphor can be seen as corresponding to three pedagogical
devices: the medieval cosmic one, the Coneglian urban one, and the Tobian domestic
one.
68
In the very next sentence, Tobias in fact continues: ‘‘And I, of little worth, laid
to my heart to enquire what good is it to man that he be compared to a Microc osm or a
City, even a Little City. It is enough that he be as one of the towers or houses among
the dwellings of a walled city.’’
69
Returning to the illustration, we observe that the house depicted there corresponds to the
metaphor of ‘‘one of the towers or houses among the dwellings of a walled city’’, which in
this context can be interpreted as the support of the Jewish community that Tobias found at
Padua during his studies. Tobias’s use of the halakhic category of ‘‘dwellings of a walled
city’’—houses that could be redeemed within a year of sale if they had been sold out of
necessity, but once acquired definitively would never revert to their original owners—
corresponds to the sense of precariousness and then self-confidence he describes in the
introduction, following his unhappy experiences in Frankfurt-on-Oder.
70
In order better to appreciate the metaphor, we will cite the entire verse quoted by Tobias
in the traditional Jewish fashion, giving only the first few words:
There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it,
and built great bulwarks against it; now there was found in it a man poor and wise, and he by his
wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man.
71
Traditional Jewish sources have subjected the ‘‘little city’’, ‘‘few men’’, ‘‘great king’’ and
‘‘poor man’’ in this story to a wide range of interpretations, presenting them, for example,
as the world at the time of the Flood, assailed by the Holy One, blessed be he, with Noah in
the role of saviour; Egypt, the Egyptians and Pharaoh, and Joseph as saviour; or Israel at
Mount Sinai; or the synagogue.
72
The interpretation adopted by Tobias, however, is that
which sees the human body as the little city, its limbs and organs as the few men, the evil
and good inclinations as the great king and the poor man, respectively. The lesson of the
entire story, as pointed out by the verses that follow the above citation is: ‘‘wisdom is better
67
Cohen, op. cit., note 1 above, folio 6a.
68
There is of course no reason to suppose that
Solomon Conegliano and Tobias Cohen were alone in
their use of such pedagogical devices. It is far more
likely that they were in general use at Padua at that time;
a fact that may explain their use by Harvey as well.
69
Cohen, op. cit., note 1 above, folio 105a.
70
Ibid., folio 60a.
71
Ecclesiastes 9:14–15: translation from The holy
scriptures, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication
Society of America, 1917.
72
Although far from the most ancient, the most
systematic commentary on Ecclesiastes is Midrash
104
Etienne Lepicard

than strength’’, or ‘‘wisd om is better than weapons of war’’.
73
The metaphor itself is taken
up endlessly in Jew ish sources—for example, the Talmud,
74
the Mid rash,
75
and Ibn Ezra.
76
Finally, let us note the expression ‘‘house of the soul’’, which is a citation from the book
of Isaiah (3:20): one of the item s on a list of adornments that, according to the prophet, will
be taken away from the daughters of Zion as a result of their wicked behaviour. The
phrase
77
has been interpreted in various ways, although traditional biblical comme ntators
have explained it to mean ornaments worn between the breasts, before the heart.
78
Tobias’s
use of this expression may denote a desire to render acceptable to religious Jewish students
not only the metaphor—in itself quite traditional, as we have seen—but also an illustration
that ‘‘lays bare’’ the internal organs, which he suggests be viewed as jewels on the breast of
a daught er of Jerusalem.
In Conclusion
Beyond the fact that it is one of the most beautiful illustrations to be published in a
Hebrew medical book of the early modern period, the representation of the human body as
a house in Ma’aseh Tuviyah is an expression of the author’s perception of man. Like the
medieval representation of the Zodiac Man, in which man was often portrayed as a
microcosm reflecting a macrocosm, Tobias’s ‘‘House Man’’ seems to have fulfilled a
same mnemonic function. While an exploration of the arts of memory shows that both
metaphors could have lived one with each other during Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the
persistence within the early modern period of the house metaphor can also be seen as an
alternative to Decartes’ metaphor of the functioning of the body as a machine, which
relates to the body as detached from the soul. In this sense, the metaphor is indicative of the
manner in which iatrochemistry perceived the function of the body as a distillery.
In addition, Tobias’s accompanying text suggests an original application of traditional
Jewish sources, to represent the author’s personal experiences: those of a man who needed
the support of his community in order to become a physician. Tobias’s use of the house
metaphor for the body thus demonstrates familiarity with mnemonic pedagogical devices
employed at Padua in general, and in Solomon Conegliano’s preparatory school in parti-
cular; devices Tobias, like Judah Messer Leon in his book on rhetoric before him, took
great pains to show—probably for pedagogical reasons—were deeply rooted in Biblical
and Talmudic sources.
ecclesiastes rabba (Vilna edition), 9:14 and 15 (the
commentary follows the order of the biblical verses).
On this Midrash, see H L Strack, and G Stemberger,
Introduction au Talmud et au Midrash, Paris, Cerf,
1986, p. 362.
73
Ecclesiastes 9:16 and 18.
74
TB Nedarim 32b.
75
For example, Bereshit Rabbah (Vilna edition),
33,2.
76
Ibn Ezra (Tudela, 1089–1164) on Ecclesiastes
9:14.
77
In the singular in Tobias’s text; see note 54
above. In the Ple
´
iade edition of the Bible, for example,
Koenig translates ‘‘batei hanefesh’’ as ‘‘bo^tes a
`
parfum’’: L’Ancien Testament, ed. E Dhorme, Paris,
Gallimard (Biblioth

eque de la Ple
´
iade), 1961, vol. 2,
p. 14.
78
Specifically Rashi (Troyes, 1040–1105), Radak
(Narbonne, 1160–1235) and Metzudat Tzion (R David
Altschuler and his son R Hillel, Prague, seventeenth to
eighteenth centuries) on Isaiah 3:20.
105
The House Illustration in Ma’aseh Tuviyah (1708)