AI Summary
5 min read“A frog under the tongue” sounds like a metaphor for something unspeakable, but in early modern Eastern European folk medicine, it was a literal diagnosis. The term ranula (Latin for “little frog”) described a cyst under the tongue that could swell to the size of a tennis ball, looking slick and frog-like. This image became the title of Marek Tuszewicki’s book A Frog Under the Tongue: Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe, recently released in paperback and discussed at a YIVO Institute event with the author and journalist Rochel Kafferson. The conversation unpacked a world where healing drew on humoral theory, astrology, animal parts, and the porous boundaries between Jewish and Christian worlds—a system that was neither primitive nor quaint, but a coherent, centuries-old logic that only began to recede from mainstream science in the 19th century.
The Three Logics of Folk Healing
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Episode Introduction & Guest Bios** - Host Julia Rothkoff introduces the podcast and YIVO, followed by co-hosts Rochel Kafferson and author Marek Tuszewicki.
- 2 (05:36) **Marek’s Path to Folk Medicine** - How encounters with Hasidic healing narratives and diverse medical manuscripts shaped the research question.
- 3 (12:22) **The Frog Under the Tongue: Title & Ranula** - The medical condition and folk logic behind the book’s evocative title.
- 4 (16:19) **Frogs as Therapeutic Tools** - How frogs and toadstones were applied in folk healing, with specific rituals and beliefs.
- 5 (21:59) **Literal Frog Use and Ritual Conditions** - The harsh realities of animal-based remedies and the importance of timing and silence.
- 6 (26:10) **Three Logics of Jewish Folk Healing** - Humoral theory, astrology, and sympathetic magic as coexisting explanatory systems.
- 7 (29:05) **Kashrut and Non-Kosher Remedies** - How Jewish folk medicine navigated the use of non-kosher ingredients like pig fat.
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Show Notes
Jews have been active participants in shaping the healing practices of the communities of Eastern Europe. Their approach largely combined the ideas of traditional Ashkenazi culture with the heritage of medieval and early modern medicine. Holy rabbis and faith healers, as well as Jewish barbers, innkeepers, and peddlers, all dispensed cures, purveyed folk remedies for different ailments, and gave hope to the sick and their families based on kabbalah, numerology, prayer, and magical Hebrew formulas. Nevertheless, as new sources of knowledge penetrated the traditional world, modern medical ideas gained widespread support. Jews became court physicians to the nobility, and when the universities were opened up to them, many also qualified as doctors. At every stage, medicine proved an important field for cross-cultural contacts.
In A Frog Under the Tongue: Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe (Liverpool UP, 2024), Marek Tuszewicki studies manuscripts, printed publications, and memoirs to tease out therapeutic advice, recipes, magical incantations, kabbalistic methods, and practical techniques, together with the ethical considerations that such approaches entailed. His research fills a gap in the study of folk medicine in Eastern Europe, shedding light on little-known aspects of Ashkenazi culture, and on how the need to treat sickness brought Jews and their neighbors together.
Join YIVO for a discussion with Tuszewicki about this book, led by cultural critic and playwright Rokhl Kafrissen.
Buy the book here
This book talk originally took place on November 11, 2024.
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