The Jewish world knows Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204), a.k.a. Maimonides and the Rambam, as rabbi, commentator on the Mishnah and codifier of Jewish law in his “Mishnah Torah.”
To the greater world, Maimonides was the philosopher-theologian of the “Guide for the Perplexed,” a work that deeply influenced Christian and Muslim religious thought.
But to Milwaukee hand surgeon Lewis Chamoy, M.D., and the more than 100 participants in the First International Maimonides Conference on Medicine and Ethics, Maimonides was a physician whose contributions to the modern field of medical ethics have been unacknowledged.
“A lot of things people say today [in medicine] — ‘Treat the whole patient, mentally and physically’; ‘Do no harm’; ‘Make sure the patient understands what you are doing’ … a lot of this comes from Maimonides,” Chamoy told The Chronicle in a telephone interview after his return from the conference.
As a physician and medical ethics thinker, “Maimonides left a legacy for the world that everyone uses, but that is not attributed to him unless a medical school has a lot of Jewish students,” Chamoy continued. “If physicians would practice medicine today using his ethics, you couldn’t ask for a better physician….”
The conference took place March 20-24 at the Sheraton Moriah Hotel in Tiberias, the largest city in the Sovev Kinneret, Milwaukee’s Partnership 2000 region in Israel. P2K is a project of the Jewish Agency for Israel and of the United Jewish Communities, the umbrella organization of North American Jewish federations.
In fact, one of the co-chairs of the event was Jacob Farbstein, M.D., general director of the Poriya Government Hospital in the region. Farbstein has participated in many P2K activities, including visits to Milwaukee; and he and Chamoy know each other.
According to Chamoy, Farbstein was one of the originators of the idea of the conference, along with Prof. Shaul M. Shasha, M.D., of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
They decided to hold this conference this year because this Jewish year (5765) is the 800th anniversary of Maimonides’ death, which led the Israeli government to proclaim 2005 as the Maimonides Year. As the location of Maimonides gravesite, Tiberias seemed a natural location for the conference.
The conference alternated lectures and discussions with touring and socializing.
Chamoy said the presentations were divided into three topic areas: Maimonides’ approach to lifestyle and health; the medical aspects of his work, including his medical writings; and his thinking on medical ethics.
Chamoy said he didn’t learn of anything that would have direct application to his own work. In his specialty, “I don’t deal with complex ethical decisions.”
But he found much “intellectual enjoyment” in learning how modern this medieval physician could be in his approach.
Above all, Chamoy said that Maimonides has not yet received his due in courses on the history of medicine.
To Chamoy, Maimonides’ “sense of ethics pervades medical education today, though it is not attributed to him. People who study medical ethics in hospitals should have a strong foundation in Maimonides’ teachings.”
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