BabMed-Member Tanja Hidde will give a talk at the Annual Meeting of the EABS 

"If an elephant swallowed a basket and passed it out": A Rabbinic Concept of Digestion?

Greek medicine, like Galen, describes the process of digestion (pepsis) according to humoral theory as a kind of transformation of the quality of the food one consumes into the quality of the receiving organ. A similar idea is expressed in rabbinic literature, however in a ritual context: the quality of the unclean (tame) swallowed object is transformed into the quality of the clean (tahor) receiving organ. What is the status of a basket swallowed by an elephant, if the animal excretes it intact? This process of swallowing and excreting an object is called the process of ?ikul. Does the usage of ?ikul in the Bavli show that the rabbis had a concept of the gastrointestinal passage?

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