| Sumario: | This article presents an unknown Old-Eastern-Yiddish remedy-book (refue-bukh) with the Hebrew title Seyfer derekh ets ha-khayim, printed in 1613 in Poland. The only known copy was rediscovered in the Austrian National Library in Vienna some 10 years ago. The text is one of the earliest Eastern-Yiddish accounts of the Jewish community in Poland. The printing place of the book is unknown, as is the name of the author, who according to his own words was purposely writing in tajtsh so that everybody could use the remedies to save his health in order to praise and serve God. The anonymous author, however, refers directly to the surrounding Jewish Polish community. Not only does he use numerous Polish-derived plant, animal and disease names but also, surprisingly modern for his time, forms of Eastern-Yiddish syntactic and semantic structures. This old Yiddish book is an invaluable document of early Eastern-Yiddish linguistics, but even more interestingly it gives us insight into the everyday life of the pre-modern Jewish society in Poland. Seyfer derekh ets ha-khayim provides the reader with detailed prescriptions on dietary rules, hygienic and moral behaviour as well as floral and animal remedies for diseases that threatened the people in early modern Poland regardless of nationality or creed.
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