Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.085 August 18, 1995 1) Introduction (Binyomn Lesin) 2) Introduction (Paul Gilon) 3) Feldsher (Zachary Baker) 4) Feldsher (Peter Kluehs) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 13 Aug 1995 03:58:23 -0400 From: lithhands@aol.com Subject: Introduction Andy Cassel introduced me to Mendele last week. My parents left Lithuania in 1939. I was born in 1943 and Yiddish was my mameloshn. I am an orthopaedic surgeon in the Los Angeles area. I have a (Jewish) humanitarian project in Lithuania and just returned from my sixth visit. I may be of help to those with an interest in Lithuania. Benjamin (Binyomn) Lesin 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 13:16:04 From: paul@pg.win.net Subject: Introduction Allow me to introduce myself. I am a retired professor of Information Systems and Statistics, residing in California. I was born in France and spoke Yiddish at home until the age of six. When I moved to Israel after the war, I learned Hebrew and a modicum of Arabic as well. (In those days, for obvious reasons, the use of Yiddish was discouraged. Questions asked in that language were usually answered in Hebrew.) After so many years of neglect, my Yiddish is fragmentary at best. As a result, my participation in Mendele will clearly be by way of questions. Paul Gilon Joshua Tree CA 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 13 Aug 95 16:36:33 PDT From: bm.yib@rlg.stanford.edu Subject: Feldshers in Konin, Poland While the shames was away, I was leafing through a newly published book, "Konin, a Quest," by a British Jewish writer, Theo Richmond, who interviewed many of his parents' landslayt from the Polish shtetl of Konin. He also revisited the shtetl itself, as part of his research -- and studied Yiddish at Oxford, in order to be able to read the Konin memorial book. Anyway, on pages 192-195 there is a description of the town feldsher. Here are excerpts: "Most ordinary folk in need of medical help for the less serious illnesses and minor surgery summoned not the doctor but the feldsher, descendant of the medieval barber-surgeon, whose presence in Konin long preceded that of the doctor. He was a sort of paramedic, or what the Chinese would call a bare-foot doctor. People trusted the feldsher's practical experience. "The census of 1765 lists two Jews as having the occupation of feldsher. The first to be mentioned by name lived in much more recent times. Chaim Warmbadt specialized in treating children. His expertise included 'tearing teeth,' to use the almost too graphic Yiddish phrase, a service he performed in his barbershop opposite the Catholic church.... "There was a woman feldsher too, reputed to be good at resetting children's dislocated bones, but the feldsher most surviving Koniners remember was Warmbadt's son-in-law and heir to the business, Jacob Strykowski. He began to practice before the First World War and remained active until the 1930s, running his barber shop as well as working as a paramedic. With a diploma that entitled him to write prescriptions, Strykowski was no ordinary feldsher. His bone-setting skills were said to be better than any doctor's. (He also happened to be my paternal grandfather's landlord.) "Strykowsky's range of treatments included cupping, much favored for such maladies as fever, asthma, bronchitis, and rheumatism. The cupping glass, shaped like a round eyecup, was called a banke in Yiddish. The feldsher would put a drop of methylated spirits in the glass, ignite it to induce a vacuum, and swiftly clap it onto the required part of the body, most frequently the back. The patient could end up with bankes all over his or her back, sucking away for ten minutes or more to draw blood to the surface of the skin. This was said to relieve deep-seated congestion. Some thought it helped to draw impurities from the body.... Bankes have given rise to an expressive Yiddish saying, used to describe an action that has proved totally futile. 'S'hot geholfn vi a toytn bankes'-- It helped as much as bankes help a corpse. "The Oxford Companion to Medicine confirms that cupping 'is now obsolete,' which was my impression too, until one day in 1992 when I went to a young physical therapist in London for treatment of a bad back. To my amazement, he suggested cupping, which he said he used to great effect on some of Britain's top rugby players. How could I refuse a treatment known to so many of my Konin forebears? As I lay on my stomach, I felt the bankes sucking gently at my skin -- not an unpleasant sensation -- and heard the pop when each glass was removed. It didn't do much for my back.... "The feldsher's other favorite form of treatment, also long recorded in the history of medicine, was bloodletting by piavkes (Polish for leeches).... Izzy Hahn remembers his grandfather applying leeches to a rheumatic leg. 'They sucked for perhaps twenty minutes, and when they had drunk enough blood, they dropped off.' "There was another treatment that the feldsher administered in people's homes, always with the chamber pot or commode at the ready: the enema. Strykowski probably used a rubber appliance for this purpose, a technological advance on the equipment used in the previous century, which my mother could recall from her childhood. Here, too, her memory found its way into a novel: "Life was full of sinister, unmentionable figures who lurked, thrust out of sight, in the back of Leah's mind: like the enema woman her grandmother talked of sometimes, from her village. The gross, red-handed enema woman with her goose- quill and her sheep's bladder, who came to deal with those over whose over-charged systems needed clearing." [The reference is to a novel by the author's wife, Lee Langley, "From the Broken Tree" (New York, 1978), p. 55.] "Konin, a Quest," by Theo Richmond, was published in 1995 by Pantheon Books. Its list price is $27.50 ($38.50 in Canada). Zachary Baker 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 16 Aug 1995 20:39:00 +0200 From: pete@pko.rhein-main.de Subject: feldsher kh'hob geleyent mit a shtarkn interes di ale protim un maysim vos di khevre hot ongeshribn vegn di feldshers. avade s'vet mer helfn vi a toytn bankes oyb ikh bet aykh funsnay *shraybt ayer briv in yidish*. az ir halt nisht in eyn banutsn di zise mame-loshn, Mendele vet mer nisht farentfern zayn nomen un kholile voltn mir gedarft im rufn Comforter. B-)) mit khavershe grusn fun di Taunus-berg peter kluehs wehrheim, daytshland ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.085