It fills a void, for despite the abundance of scholarship on the subject, no other single volume attempts to present such a broad overview for the general reader with basic familiarity with the outlines of Jewish history. A common motif is physicians' struggle against antisemitism and institutional discrimination. The response of Jewish physicians in Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries was to work in private clinics, form Jewish hospitals, and in many cases emigrate. In the extreme example of the Holocaust, many physicians devoted themselves to their medical responsibilities in ghettos and concentration camps and as partisan fighters. The book begs the question of what element in the nature of Judaism and the Jewish experience has made medicine such a favored profession.
Several writers state that medicine was an avenue of assimilation in both medieval and modern times.
At the center of the book both physically and spiritually is a list of 39 Jewish Nobel Prize winners in science and medicine from 1908 to 1989, a majority of whom are American, and its length is undoubtedly dramatic. Yet, one is left to wonder what it is about their Jewishness that contributed to their stellar careers. One can always find additional topics to include in a book of this sort. For example, Maimonides has played such an important role in both history and Jewish culture, one might wish that he had been given a more prominent place. A reading of his medical and religious works makes clear that he fused the sensibility of Judaism and medicine.