Illustrations from the Wellcome Institute Library. A Jewish physician in the seventeenth century.

ONE of the most interesting figures in the annals of Jewish medical history is Tobias Cohn (1652-1729), sometimes called Kohn or Katz. His claim to immortality cannot be based on any originality as a thinker or innovator but is simply due to the breadth of his knowledge reflected in his encyclopaedic work entitled Ma 'aseh Tobiyyah, written in Hebrew and first published in Venice in 1708. A copy of this work is held in the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.' Tobias presents himself to his public on the verso of the title page with a portrait designed and engraved by Antonio Luciani of Venice (fl. 1710), Fig. 1. He is shown with a book in his right hand and a doctor's ring to denote the savant, and an astrolabe in his left hand to signify one seeking the natural order. Around the portrait runs a border in which Tobias furnishes the following information about himself, given here in English translation: "If you seek my name, my family, or my town I will answer you that you may know the truth. I am Tobias Cohn from a family of scholars, and from a town of scholars, faithful city, Metz in France may God for ever preserve her. And now I am 48 years: in the month Etanim of this year.2 And yet I am with my people in Constantinople: but my hope is that I shall have the honour to see Jerusalem rebuilt." Tobias, as he tells us, came from a family of scholars. His grandfather, Eleazar Cohn, emigrated from Safed in Palestine to Cracow and had printed in that city a theological work of his uncle, R. Elijah ben Moses de Vidas, entitled Re 'sit hokmah.3 Eleazar settled in Kamenetz-Podolsk where he practised medicine. His youngest son, Moses Kohn, also practised medicine, and was appointed rabbi of the town of Narol in the district of Bialsk on the Ukrainian border. Moses left Narol during the Cossack revolt of 1648 to escape the persecution of the Cossack leader, Bogdan Chmielnicki, which was directed with particular vigour against the Jewish community, and settled in Metz where in 1649 he was appointed rabbi of the important Jewish community. Moses died in 1659 leaving a widow and two sons. His widow married a second time and subsequently left Metz. The upbringing of the two sons was entrusted to their