Shabbat 81 ~ A History of Toilet Paper

Toilet paper has been in short supply recently. But it was non-existent in talmudic times. People used stones instead. Today’s page of Talmud gets into the details of personal hygiene, and discusses how the stones used to clean oneself after defecation may be prepared and used on Shabbat:

שבת פא,א

זוּנִין עַל לְבֵי מִדְרְשָׁא, אֲמַר לְהוּ: רַבּוֹתַי, אֲבָנִים שֶׁל בֵּית הַכִּסֵּא שִׁיעוּרָן בְּכַמָּה? אָמְרוּ לוֹ: כְּזַיִת כֶּאֱגוֹז וּכְבֵיצָה. אֲמַר לְהוּ: וְכִי טוּרְטָנֵי יַכְנִיס? נִמְנוּ וְגָמְרוּ מְלֹא הַיָּד. תַּנְיָא, רַבִּי יוֹסֵי אוֹמֵר: כְּזַיִת כֶּאֱגוֹז וּכְבֵיצָה. רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן בְּרַבִּי יוֹסֵי אוֹמֵר מִשּׁוּם אָבִיו: מְלֹא הַיָּד

Examples of terracotta pessoi found in Roman latrines dating from the 2nd century AD. The one on the left comes from Utica (Sicily). The one the right was found in Crete. From Charlier, P. Brun L. Prêtre C. Huynh-Charler I. Toilet Hygiene in the Classical era. British Medical Journal. 2012; 345; e8287.

The Gemara relates: Zunin entered the study hall and said to the Sages: My teachers, with regard to stones that may be moved on Shabbat for wiping in the bathroom, how much is their measure? They said to him: Stones of only three sizes may be moved for that purpose: An olive-bulk, a nut-bulk, and an egg-bulk. He said to them: And will he take scales [turtani] into the bathroom to weigh each stone? They were counted and the Sages concluded that one need not measure the stones. He simply takes a handful of stones. It was taught in a baraita: Rabbi Yosei says the measure of bathroom stones is an olive-bulk, a nut-bulk, and an egg-bulk. Rabbi Shimon, son of Rabbi Yosei, says in the name of his father: One need not measure the stones. He simply takes a handful of stones.

Roman Toilet HygiEne

Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Drinking Cup (kylix) c. 500 BCE. From Orvieto Greece. A gift of Edward Perry Warren to MFA; accessioned 1910. Accession # RES.08.31b

In a helpful paper titled Toilet hygiene in the classical era, the authors explain that in the Roman world there was no toilet paper. After defecation, the Roman rear end would be cleaned with a natural sponge attached to a stick called a tersorium. This sponge was then rinsed off in water or vinegar and thoughtfully left for the next person to use. They also used small stones or ceramic fragments called pessoi in place of a sponge, much like those described in today’s page of Talmud. These pessoi have been uncovered in ancient latrines all around the Mediterranean.

The next time you have a chance to visit the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, have a look at their Greek drinking cup or kylix dated around 500 BCE (accession number RES.08.31b.) It demonstrates (as if you needed an explanation) how these pessoi were used. A man is shown semi-squatting with his clothing raised. While he maintains his balance with a cane in his right hand he is clearly wiping his buttocks using a pessos with his left hand. So now you know.

Early Toilet Paper

I remember waxed toilet paper, rather like baking paper (yes, it was once a thing) from my grandparents homes in north London in the 1960s and 70s. Rather inexplicably, the British once liked their paper to be hard and impervious to absorbing anything, and had to be persuaded to try a softer approach.

Toilet paper was used in China as early as the sixth century CE. In fact the scholar Ten Chih-Thui (531-91 CE) wrote that “paper on which there are quotations or commentaries from Five Classics or the names of sages, I dare not use for toilet purposes.” All this was a bit much for an Arab traveller through China in 851. He was horrified at the practice of using toilet paper: “They are not careful about cleanliness, and they do not wash themselves with water when they have done their necessities; but they only wipe themselves with paper.” One can only wonder what the traveller would have thought of the English and their waxed shiny toilet paper.

Toilet Paper and Human Dignity

Later in today’s page of Talmud, Rav Chisdah was asked if it would be permitted to carry the pessoi up to a rooftop latrine on Shabbat. The concern here is that this would involve additional exertion, which is forbidden. Rav Chisdah ruled that it was certainly permissible, because “human dignity is so important that it suspends a prohibition of the Torah” (גָּדוֹל כְּבוֹד הַבְּרִיּוֹת שֶׁדּוֹחֶה אֶת ״לֹא תַעֲשֶׂה״ שֶׁבַּתּוֹרָה).

This lofty principal has many disparate applications; it has been cited in modern responsa literature as the driving force behind allowing the deaf to wear hearing aids on Shabbat, or allowing women to be called to read from the Torah. But from today’s page of Talmud we are reminded that, for the rabbis of the Talmud, the principal of human dignity operates in our most private and intimate spaces.

Shabbat 77b ~ On the Healing Power of Honey

In today’s page of Talmud we learn that aside from being delicious, honey was once used as a salve to heal a wound:

שבת עז,ב

דְּבַשׁ כְּדֵי לִיתֵּן עַל הַכָּתִית. תָּנָא: כְּדֵי לִיתֵּן עַל פִּי כָתִית. בָּעֵי רַב אָשֵׁי: ״עַל כָּתִית״ — אַפּוּמָּא דְּכוּלַּהּ כָּתִית, אוֹ דִילְמָא אַמּוּרְשָׁא קַמָּא דְּכָתִית, לְאַפּוֹקֵי הוּדְרָנָא דְּלָא — תֵּיקוּ

We learned in the mishna: The measure that determines liability for carrying out honey is equivalent to that which is used to place on a sore caused by chafing. A tanna taught in a Tosefta: The precise measure is equivalent to that which is placed on the opening of a sore, i.e., on the wound itself. Rav Ashi raised a dilemma: Does the term on a sore mean the measure of honey spread on the opening of the entire sore; or, perhaps it means the measure spread on the primary protuberance of the sore, to the exclusion of the surrounding area upon which he does not spread honey? No resolution was found for this dilemma either. Therefore, let it stand unresolved.

But elsewhere in the Talmud, honey was considered to be bad for a wound:

בבא קמא פה,א 

כדתניא הרי שעבר על דברי רופא ואכל דבש או כל מיני מתיקה מפני שדבש וכל מיני מתיקה קשין למכה והעלה מכתו גרגותני יכול יהא חייב לרפאותו ת"ל רק

It was taught in a Braisa: If the victim of an assault disobeyed the advice of his doctor and ate honey or all types of sweets - and this violated his doctor's instructions because honey and all types of sweets are harmful for a wound - it could be thought that the assailant is still obligated to heal the victim. Therefore the Torah uses the word רק (only) to teach otherwise...(Bava Kamma 85a)

Secretions of the honey bee. From Israili, Z. Antimicrobial Properties of Honey. American Journal of Therapeutics 2014. 21; 304–323.

But certainly in today’s page of Talmud, honey was considered to be beneficial. In fact honey has been used as a medicine for at least the last 3,000 years.  And as we will see, honey has some quite amazing therapeutic uses.

FROM WHERE DOES HONEY COME?

The honeybee is the only insect that produces food eaten by humans. Here is what happens: The female honeybees use their proboscis (a tube-like tongue) to up suck flower nectar and mix it with their saliva and enzymes. Then they store it in a honey sack. Back at the hive, the mixture is regurgitated into cells, dried to about 16% moisture, and stored as a primary food source. As you might expect, the content of the honey depends on a number of factors including the species of bee, the kind of flowers on which they fed, and the conditions in which the honey was stored.

Honey as an Antibiotic

In a recent review article that focuses on the antimicrobial properties of honey, Zafar Israili from the Emory School of Medicine noted that a large number of laboratory and clinical studies have confirmed the broad-spectrum antimicrobial properties of honey.  These include antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, and antimycobacterial.  “Honey,” wrote Israili, “was found to be an effective topical treatment for ringworms, athlete’s foot, jock itch, nail fungus, and yeast infections and reported to be comparable to many over-the-counter antifungal preparations.” These properties are likely due to the honey’s acidity, osmotic effect, high sugar concentration, and the presence of chemicals like hydrogen peroxide, antioxidants, and lysozymes.  

Honey contains more than 600 compounds (you can see a list of them here), and the wound healing properties of honey are probably its oldest and best studied medicinal property.  It has been shown to aid wound healing in conditions such as chronic pressure sores, traumatic and diabetic wounds, diabetic foot ulcers, boils, burns, fistulas, necrotizing fasciitis, and a very nasty condition called Fournier’s gangrene. (That's necrosis of the scrotum. Yes, quite gross.) So in contrast to the advice of the talmudic doctors that "honey is bad for an injury", honey turns out to be rather good for wounds, especially when applied directly to them.  But honey isn't just good for wounds...

“There is a large body of evidence to support the use of honey as a wound dressing for a wide range of types of wounds. Its antibacterial activity rapidly clears infection and protects wounds from becoming infected, and thus it provides a moist healing environment without the risk of bacterial growth occurring. It also rapidly debrides wounds and removes malodor.”

— Molan, PC. The Evidence supporting the use of honey as a wound dressing. Lower Extremity Wounds 2006. 5 (1); 52.

Your Mother was correct

A 2012 study from physicians at the Sackler School of Medicine in Tel Aviv tested the effects of honey on nocturnal cough and sleep quality.  They enrolled 150 children age 1-5 years (and presumably, their tired and exasperated parents) and half an hour before bedtime, gave half of them “a single dose of 10g of eucalyptus honey, citrus honey, or labiatae honey,” and the other half a placebo. (In case you were wondering, as was I, as to what the placebo was, here’s the answer: date extract, “because its structure, brown color, and taste are similar to that of honey.” True enough.) What they found might change the way you treat your own cough this winter. Each of the three honey groups had a better response compared with the date extract, and no significant differences were found among the different types of honey. The authors concluded that honey may be preferable to cough and cold medications for childhood respiratory infections. 

The effect of different types of honey and date extract on cough frequency (I), cough severity (II), cough bothersome to child (III), the child’s sleep (IV), parent’s sleep (V), and combined symptoms score (VI). P <0.05 for the comparisons between group D and the other groups. A, eucalyptus honey; B, citrus honey; C, labiatae honey; D, silan date extract. From Cohen, AH. et al. Effect of Honey on Nocturnal Cough and Sleep Quality: A Double-blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Study. Pediatrics 2012. 130 (3); 465-471.

Honey as a Medicine for Pretty much everything

There are dozens of other medical conditions for which honey may be used. Here is what the review from Israili has to say:

Honey has been reported to be of benefit in a large number of human pathologies including allergy, asthma, bronchitis, common cold, flu, hay fever, nasal congestion, rhinitis, sinusitis, upper respiratory infections, sore throat, cough, fatigue, anxiety, migraine (stress related), cuts, lacerations, burns, wounds (venous, arterial, diabetic, malignant), pressure ulcers, malignant ulcers, perianal and gluteofemoral fistulas, bed sores, adult and neonatal postoperative infections, necrotizing fasciitis, pilonidal sinus, insect bites, infections (bacterial including antibiotic-resistant strains and fungal), septicemia, conjunctivitis and other eye diseases, endophthalmitis, acne, chronic seborrheic dermatitis, dandruff, eczema, psoriasis, inflammation, gingivitis, stomach ache, stomach ulcers, digestive disorders, constipation, vomiting, diarrhea, colitis, dehydration, diabetes, osteoporosis, insomnia, chronic fatigue syndrome, anemia, hypertension, immune disorders, multiple sclerosis, cardiovascular disease, hepatitis, tumors, cancer, and radiation/chemotherapy-induced oral mucositis.

You'd have to check the references and decide if the evidence supports claims like this. But in any event, this list supports the observation in today’s page Talmud that honey was used to heal wounds. If only it helped heal the present pandemic.

Shabbat 75a ~ Some Jewish Astronomers

שבת עה,א

 אָמַר רַבִּי שְׁמוּאֵל בַּר נַחְמָנִי אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן: מִנַּיִן שֶׁמִּצְוָה עַל הָאָדָם לְחַשֵּׁב תְּקוּפוֹת וּמַזָּלוֹת — שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם וַעֲשִׂיתֶם כִּי הִיא חׇכְמַתְכֶם וּבִינַתְכֶם לְעֵינֵי הָעַמִּים״, אֵיזוֹ חָכְמָה וּבִינָה שֶׁהִיא לְעֵינֵי הָעַמִּים — הֱוֵי אוֹמֵר: זֶה חִישּׁוּב תְּקוּפוֹת וּמַזָּלוֹת

And Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahmani said that Rabbi Yochanan said: From where is it derived that there is a mitzva incumbent upon a person to calculate astronomical seasons and the movement of constellations? As it was stated: “And you shall guard and perform, for it is your wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the nations”(Deuteronomy 4:6). What wisdom and understanding is there in the Torah that is in the eyes of the nations, i.e., appreciated and recognized by all?  It is the calculation of astronomical seasons and the movement of constellations, as the calculation of experts is witnessed by all.

According to the great Rabbi Yochanan (or more likely Rabbi Yonatan, since he was Rabbi Shmuel’s teacher) it is a mitzvah for every person to calculate for herself the positions of the planets and constellations. This is also the position of the important work Sefer Mitzvot Gagdol (#47) complied by Moses ben Jacob of Coucy and completed in 1247. Moses gave two reasons for this mitzvah. The first is that by understanding astronomy, farmers will gain insight into the planting cycle. And secondly, a knowledge of astronomy and the passage of the seasons will help determine when additional months must be intercalated into the calendar so as to allow Pesach to be celebrated in the Spring. But Rabbi Yochanan’s prooftext “for it is your wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the nations” suggests that it is not just about an understanding of astronomy. That knowledge must be demonstrated to those outside of Judaism. And there is, in fact, a long tradition of Jews being astronomers, and sharing their knowledge far beyond the Jewish community. It started with the very first Jew: Abraham.

THE THREE Abraham the Astronomers

According to David Gans, Abraham, the first Jew, was also the first Jewish astronomer. Gans, who wrote his compendium on astronomy around 1612, believed that Abraham had obtained his own knowledge of the stars from none other than the primordial human, Adam.

Adam was an outstanding astronomer . . . and Josephus has written that when Abraham went down to Egypt because of the famine he taught them astronomy and mathematics and was praised by the Egyptians for his outstanding wisdom in these two disciplines....Abraham passed this knowledge to his son Isaac and grandson Jacob.

And so began our long tradition of taking a special interest in astronomy. It would be hard to call the early medieval practitioners astronomers in the modern sense of the word, since almost none actually sat around and looked at the motions of the heavens. Instead they translated works of astronomy into Hebrew, or drew up tables and charts of where the planets could be located, called ephemerides. One of the earliest was Sahl ibn Bishr al-Israili (c. 786–c. 845), also known as Haya al-Yahudi (Haya the Jew) who is believed to have been the first person to translate Ptolemy’s Almagest into Arabic, though not everyone believes that he was actually Jewish.

There is no doubt though that the famous exegete, grammarian and poet Abraham ibn Ezra (d.1167) was Jewish. And he was also a bit of an astronomer too. Actually what he did was mostly astrology, but hey, that’s what everyone did in the twelfth century. He was, according to Bernard Goldstein, “one of the foremost transmitters of Arabic scientific knowledge to the West,” and since Ibn Ezra was one of the first scholars to write on scientific subjects in Hebrew, he had to invent or adapt many Hebrew terms to represent the technical terminology of Arabic. Sadly, some of his translations and original works are no longer extant, but among his most famous works are Sefer Ha’Ibbur (The Book of Intercalation), about the calendar, and Sefer HaMeorot, on medical astrology.

A third “Abraham the Astronomer” was the Spanish Abraham bar Hiyya (d. 1136) who was also an important mathematician. This Abraham wrote Tzurat Ha’aretz (The Form of the Earth) on the formation of the heavens and the earth, as well as Cheshbon Mahalach HaKochavim (Calculation of the Course of the Stars).

Levi ben Gershon

Measuring the height of a star with a Jacob's Staff. From John Sellers' Practical Navigation (1672).

Levi ben Gershon (d.1344) -the “Ralbag” - lived a century later and made an enormous contribution to astronomy. He is well known as a Jewish philosopher and the author of Sefer Milhamot Ha-Shem, (The Wars of the Lord), which took some twelve years to write. He also wrote Ma’aseh Choshev, a work on mathematics. It was not widely read outside of Jewish circles since it was never translated from the Hebrew, though it contains a number of very important theorems. But Levi was also an astronomer in the sense of the word used today. According to the late Yuval Ne’eman, “he personally remeasured everything, basing his models on his own observations only. In that, he is rather unique for that period. Levi writes "no argument can nullify the reality that is perceived by the senses, for true opinion must follow reality, but reality need not conform to opinion" - certainly not the usual position in the Middle Ages.” The Ralbag is also generally credited with the invention of an astronomical device called Jacob’s Staff. It measured the angles between heavenly bodies, and was also used by European sailors for navigation. Levi’s contributions to astronomy are recognized today; there is a crater on the moon named after him.

David Gans, Astronomer Extraordinaire

Another Jewish astronomer who actually did real astronomy was David Gans, who we mentioned above. Gans was born in 1541 in Germany though he spent most of his later life in Prague. While there, he frequented the observatory of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler and learned his astronomy directly from what he saw. His description of the time he spent inside the observatory is perhaps the only one of its kind in rabbinic literature: It’s worth reading just for that:

I can recount how in the year 5360 (1600) our exalted lord Emperor Rudolf (may his glory be uplifted), a man of wisdom, full of general knowledge and expert in astronomy, who values and honors those who are learned, sent a mission to Denmark to invite the eminent scholar Tycho Brahe. He was a scientist and learned in astronomy, and a man who is a prince among his people. The Emperor installed him in a castle in Benatky (which is about five parsaot from the capital Prague), where he remained isolated. [Rudolf] gave him a yearly allowance of three thousand talars together with bread, wine and beer, not to mention other gifts. There he lived with twelve others, all of whom were experts in astrology [sic] and in the large instruments [for measuring,] the likes of which had never been seen. The Emperor Rudolf built thirteen consecutive rooms, and in each room were special instruments that enabled them to view the paths of the all the planets and most of the stars.

Throughout the year they would make and record daily observations of the Sun’s orbit, its latitude and longitude and its distance from the Earth. At night they would carefully do the same for each of the six planets and most of the stars, noting their latitude, longitude and distance from the Earth. I, your author, was there on three separate occasions, each lasting five consecutive days. I sat with them in their observatory, and I saw how they worked. They did amazing work, not just with the planets but also with the stars, recognizing each by its name. When each star would cross the meridian its position would be measured with three different instruments, each operated by two experts. This position would then immediately be transcribed into hours and minutes, for which purpose [Tycho] had an amazing clock. I can testify that none of our ancestors had ever seen or heard of such a device, and it has never been described in a book, whether written by a Jew or Gentile.

And a Famous Jewish Female Astronomer

There are dozens and dozens of other examples of famous medieval and modern astronomers that we cannot include because of space (though you can find a partial listing here). But let’s end with a Jewish astronomer who just had an observatory named in her honor - Vera Rubin (1928-2016). She was born to Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, educated at Vassar, Cornell and Georgetown, and moved to the Carnegie Institution in Washington in the 1960s. She studied the rotation of galaxies, and discovered that something other than their matter must be holding them together. As her obituary in The New York Times noted, “her work helped usher in a Copernican-scale change in cosmic consciousness, namely the realization that what astronomers always saw and thought was the universe is just the visible tip of a lumbering iceberg of mystery.” Being a woman in a man’s field had tremendous challenges, and called for ingenuity:

…she still had to battle for access to a 200-inch telescope on Palomar Mountain in California jointly owned by Carnegie and Caltech. When she did get there, she found that there was no women’s restroom. …Dr. Rubin taped an outline of a woman’s skirt to the image of a man on a restroom door, making it a ladies’ room.

Vera Rubin was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and last year the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope was renamed the National Science Foundation Vera C. Rubin Observatory in recognition of her contributions to the study of dark matter and her outspoken advocacy for the equal treatment and representation of women in science. Despite her achievements she remained humble. “I’m sorry I know so little. I’m sorry we all know so little” she once said."But that’s kind of the fun, isn’t it?” Yes. It is.

Shabbat 65b ~ Prosthetic Limbs

שבת סה, ב

הַקִּיטֵּעַ יוֹצֵא בְּקַב שֶׁלּוֹ, דִּבְרֵי רַבִּי מֵאִיר 

MISHNA: One with an amputated leg may go out on Shabbat with his wooden leg, as it has the legal status of a shoe; this is the statement of Rabbi Meir.

The more you look, the more that amputees and amputation appear in Jewish sources. Here are just a few:

• “And you shall cut off her hand” (Deut. 25:12) is the Biblical punishment for a woman who, when trying to save her husband, mutilates the genitals of his attacker.

• Men from the tribes of Reuven and Shimon cut off the thumbs and big toes of a Canaanite king they defeated in battle (Judges 1:6)

• King David ordered the amputation of the hands and feet of the men who had killed Ish-Boshet (II Samuel 4:12).

• The Midrash (Midrash Tehilim 137:4) relates that after the destruction of the First Temple the Jews exiled to Babylon cut off their own thumbs so that they would not be able to play their musical instruments in front of Nebuchadnezzer.

• The hands of Yissachar from the village of Barkai were amputated as punishment for his contempt of the government (Pesachim 57b).

It is little wonder then, that the Talmud mentions prostheses, which, it turns out, have been around for as long as we have been hacking off limbs and digits.

The Wooden Big Toe Of Cairo

The earliest limb so far discovered was found on the mummified body in the necropolis at Thebes-West in Cairo. It is dated to about 950 BCE and is a wooden toe.

Wooden prosthesis, attached to the forefoot by a textile lace. From Nerlich, A.G. Zink A. Szeimies U. Hagedorn H.G. Ancient Egyptian prosthesis of the big toe. The Lancet 2000; 356: 2176–79

The toe’s owner was a woman who died sometime in her fifties. Pathologists determined that her toe had been amputated while she was alive, and that “the missing toe had been replaced by a wooden prosthesis painted dark brown and made up of three separate components.” They also concluded that this provided “compelling evidence that the surgical expertise to carry out toe, and possibly other amputations, sometimes followed by prosthetic replacement, was present in Egypt during this period.” Big toes are very important for getting about, since they carry about about 40% of our walking weight. Replacing it is therefore of great importance if the amputee is to regain any sort of independent ambulation. And notice how delightfully realistic the toe is. When a prosthesis was just called for, the artisan replicated the toe in all of its form, including its nail bed. I am sure the owner was rather pleased with the outcome.

The Wooden Foot of Hegesistratus of Elis

Living some five hundred years after the owner of the wooden toe, the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484-425 BCE) recorded how the prophet Hegesistratus of Elis fell was captured by the Spartans and was condemned to death. Very much not wanting to die, Hegesistratos managed to get hold of a sword, and cut off his foot. This allowed him to remove the chains holding him, and then “this done, he tunneled through the wall out of the way of the guards who kept watch over him, and so escaped.” The reason I share this with you is because of what comes next: “After he was healed [he] had made himself a foot of wood.” After this very Aron Ralston move the prophet hobbled around for some time, but apparently he was never able to run quite fast enough, and his enemies soon caught up with him. “The enmity which he bore them brought him no good at the last, for they caught him at his divinations in Zacynthus and killed him.”

The Early Modern Prosthetic Limbs

In 1579 the French surgeon Ambroise Pare (1510–1590) published a description of the artificial limbs he fitted on his amputees. Writing in the journal International Orthopedics, Philippe Hernigou noted that Pare wanted them to be fully functional, and not just stop-gap solutions. “When he designed legs, he gave them a mechanical knee that could be locked when standing and bent at will. He drew up preliminary sketches of an arm that could be bent with a pulley that mimicked arm muscles.” But his mechanical hand seemed to have been his proudest invention. It was “operated by catches and springs, [and] was worn by a French Army captain in battle.” Apparently it worked so well that the captain was able to grip and release the reins of his horse.

Le Petit Lorrain. Les oeuvres d’Ambroise Paré 1633.

The chicken with a prosthetic leg

It is clear from today’s page of Talmud that prosthetic limbs were used to help amputees. But another story in the Talmud suggested they may also have helped chickens. In Chullin (57b) there is a story about Rabbi Shimon ben Chalafta, whose chicken somehow dislocated its femur. And what did the good rabbi do? Why he made a prosthetic support for this poor bird:

ותרנגולת היתה לו לרבי שמעון בן חלפתא שנשמטה ירך שלה ועשו לה שפופרת של קנה וחיתה

Rabbi Shimon ben Chalafta had a hen whose femur was dislocated, and they made it a support out of the tube of a reed and it lived…

It is good to know that the rabbis’ care and concern for amputees and those with physical challenges extended to animals as well. We would expect no less.