"From Machon Puah"

Effective Amulets

Last week we looked at some unusual medical remedies suggested by the Gemara and saw that they could only be accepted and elevated to the level of medical treatment if they had been checked and found to be effective.
This then leads us to the Talmudic discussion regarding amulets that have often been used for therapeutic purposes.
The Mishna (Shabbat 6:2) states that one cannot go out in place where there is no eruv while carrying an amulet not from an expert. This implies that one is permitted to go outside with an amulet from an expert. The idea behind this is that a non-expert amulet cannot be relied upon and there is a fear that someone will take it off in the public thoroughfare and discard it. However if it is an expert amulet then he would not take it off and simply throw it away.
The Gemara (Shabbat 61) discusses how we define “expert” in relation to an amulet. An expert amulet is one that has successfully healed three people. However Rav Pappa said in order to permit carrying an amulet, the amulet need not have been checked three times itself. Rather if it was written by someone who has been proven to heal people through his amulets then any subsequent amulet that he writes is considered “expert” and can be carried.
There is no rational explanation as to how and why amulets work, nor why some are effective and others do not help. There is a famous story of a woman who asked Rabbi Yechezkel Landau, the author of the Noda BiYehuda, the Rav of Prague and one of the foremost poskim of the 18th century, to write her an amulet. He initially refused but she was persistent and eventually he agreed on the condition that she open it after a certain amount of time. If it was erased then she would be healed. At the appointed time the woman opened the amulet and saw that indeed it was erased and she was delighted and eventually got better. Some could claim that this was a miraculous event but we could explain this story in a more rational way that the Sage employed a knowledge of psychology and it was this encouragement that helped the woman to be healed.
Either way the Talmud presents two approaches to determining whether a particular remedy works. One is specific to the remedy itself, while the other claims that since it was given by a proven expert he does not need to prove the efficacy of each of his remedies.
This could be employed to explain other more modern forms of natural medicine. Either we need to investigate each and every remedy or we can rely on the proven expert with whatever they give.
So what are the limits of natural medicine?      More on this next week.

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