Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Doctor Luzzatto's British Pills for Bilious Complaints.

Here's one way the notable 18th century Hebrew poet Ephraim Luzzatto made money at his day job:



The ad appeared for several weeks in the London Courier and Evening Gazette November and December of 1794.

Here's a poem of his which someone translated from Italian:



Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser 11.19.1765

Here's the title page of his famous book of poems:



Unless his name was actually Ephraim Mordechai, then I'm not sure why his name is Angelo. Among Italian Jews "Angelo" was, and hopefully is, used for the Hebrew name "Mordechai," the same way "Zalman" is for "Shlomo." This naming convention is presumably based on Megillah 15a -- אמר רב נחמן מלאכי זה מרדכי ולמה נקרא שמו מלאכי שהיה משנה למלך.

Please see my prior post, A shocking doctor's prescription written by Ephraim Luzzatto.