On the Disease Called Cordiaca (or Herzgespann, Riebkuchen) in the Jewish Context

Abstract

The concept of kordiakos appears in the pages of the Talmud and later in rabbinic commentaries, where it is explained as the name of a demon capable of confusing someone who drinks young wine. A disease with a similar sounding name—cordiaca—was known to early modern European medicine. Its occurrence is also recorded in nineteenth-century ethnographic collections, where it is often labelled by auxiliary German terms Herzgespann or Riebkuchen. It can also be found in this form in relatively numerous documents of Jewish provenance. Is it possible to prove a connection between the two afflictions, if this is how one of the most important Jewish medical manuals of the Haskalah era—Marpe la-am (1834–1842)—interprets them?