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

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. 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 revolution; 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—as, for example, in such pictures that note suitable points for blood-letting in reference to the signs of the zodiac. 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. Without denying this, one might ask whether such books were not by the same token merely employing a simple