| Sumario: | Nahmanides's discussion of medical care in Sefer torat ha-adam reveals a unique halakhic approach to the interaction between Jews and non-Jews in a medical framework. While adhering to traditional principles of particularism and suspicion of non-Jews, his rulings enabled Jewish physicians and patients to participate in a multicultural medical system. Nahmanides permitted a Jew to be treated by a Christian physician who heals by the methods dictated by Greek-Arabic medicine and to purchase pharmaceuticals from expert manufacturers. His approach reflects his perception of the physician as a professional committed to the principles of a cohesive discipline, irrespective of his religious community, an attitude in keeping with the growing professionalization of the medical system in thirteenth-century Catalonia, within which Nahmanides himself practiced. In another innovative ruling, Nahmanides permitted a Jewish practitioner to treat non-Jews without remuneration, based on the principle of maintaining peaceful intergroup relations.
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