Bava Kamma Bonus ~ What Is An Ox, and Why You Should Not Daven Close To One

As the Talmud addresses the responsibility for the injuries of one cow caused by another, today we will look at the dangers of praying too close to these usually gentle animals. Back in Masechet Berachot, there is a discussion of the circumstances under which a person may interrupt her prayers because of a threatened physical danger. Getting too close to snakes is not a good idea, but cows are a problem too.

ברכות לג, א

אָמַר רַבִּי יִצְחָק: רָאָה שְׁווֹרִים — פּוֹסֵק. דְּתָנֵי רַב הוֹשַׁעְיָה: מַרְחִיקִין מִשּׁוֹר תָּם — חֲמִשִּׁים אַמָּה, וּמִשּׁוֹר מוּעָד — כִּמְלוֹא עֵינָיו 

Rabbi Yitzchak said: One who saw oxen coming toward him, he interrupts his prayer, as Rav Hoshaya taught: One distances himself fifty cubits from an innocuous ox [shor tam], an ox with no history of causing damage with the intent to injure, and from a forewarned ox [shor muad], an ox whose owner was forewarned because his ox has gored three times already, one distances himself until it is beyond eyeshot.

So today we will discuss injuries from oxen and cows. But first, just what is an ox?

Just what is an ox?

The Hebrew word used in the Talmud is shor - (שור, rhymes with shore). Consider the following verse from Leviticus 22:27:

שור או כשב או עז כי יולד והיה שבעת ימים תחת אמו 

Here are some of the ways it is translated into English:

• When a bull or a goat is born, it shall be seven days under its mother... (Robert Alter. The Five Books of Moses. [Alter seems to have forgotten to translate the word כשב]).

• When an ox or a sheep or a goat is born, it shall be seven days under its mother...(S.R. Hirsch. The Pentateuch, translated into English by Isaac Levy.)

• When any of the herd, or a sheep, or a goat is brought forth, then it shall be seven days under its dam..(The Pentateuch, translated into English by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silberman.)

• When an ox or a sheep or a goat is born, it shall stay seven days with its mother...(The JPS Torah Commentary, ed. N. Sarna.)

• When a bullock or a sheep or a goat is brought forth, then it shall be seven days under its dam...(Koren Jerusalem Bible.)

• When a calf, a lamb or a goat is born, it is to remain with its mother for seven days...(New International Version.)

• When a bullock, or a sheep, or a goat, is brought forth, then it shall be seven days under the dam...(King James Bible)

There are more, but you get the point. The word shor (שור) has been translated as a bull, an ox, a calf, a bullock and as a collective, any of the herd.  The Koren Talmud and the Soncino Talmud translate it as ox.  The ArtScroll Schottenstein Talmud as a bull. Confused? Me too.

Here are some of The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary definitions of an ox:

1. The domestic bovine quadruped (sexually dist. as bull and cow); in common use, applied to the male castrated and used for draught purposes, or reared to serve as food.

2. Zool. Any beast of the bovine family of ruminants, including the domestic European species, the 'wild oxen' preserved in certain parks in Britain, the buffalo, bison, gaur, yak, musk-ox, etc.

In his late nineteenth century translation of the Jerusalem Talmud into French, Moise Schwab translated the word shor as "le bouef" (rather than "le teureau"). De Sola's English translation of the Mishnah, published in 1843, uses the word ox. So does the 1878 compendium by Joseph Barclay, and the first complete English translation of the Talmud, by Michael Rodkinson, published between 1896 and 1903.  The translation of shor as ox is goes back to these early translations, but the suggestion that the meaning of the word is a 'castrated male bovine quadraped' is certainly wrong. Jews are forbidden to castrate their animals, and a castrated bull would have been ineligible to use as a sacrifice. And so we must conclude that the best translation of the word shor (שור) is a bull (well done, ArtScroll!).  

The delightfully named lecturer Dr. Goodfriend from California State University recently published a lengthy paper (in this book) on the various terms for cattle in the Bible, and the question of whether a castrated bull (a gelding) could have been offered as a sacrifice in the Temple.  The good professor Goodfriend concludes that indeed the prohibition against the castration of animals "would have placed the Israelite farmer at a disadvantage as fewer suitable animals would have been available for his use." One possible way to overcome come this (other than to use cows for ploughing) would have been to import castrated bulls from those who lived outside of Israel.  

And having sorted that out, let’s turn to the fun topic of the day. Injuries from cows.

“Cow-related trauma is a common among farming communities and is a potentially serious mechanism of injury that appears to be under-reported in a hospital context. Bovine-related head-butt and trampling injuries should be considered akin to high-velocity trauma.”

— Murphy, CG. McGuire, CM. O’Malley, N. Harrington P. Cow-related trauma: A 10-year review of injuries admitted to a single institution. Injury 2010. 41: 548–550.

Injuries from Domestic bulls (and Cows too)

Mechanisms of injury from cows. From Murphy, CG. McGuire, CM. O’Malley, N. Harrington P. Cow-related trauma: A 10-year review of injuries admitted to a single institution. Injury 2010. 41: 548–550.

Much of the fourth chapter of the Talmud in Bava Kamma addresses injuries from domestic bulls and cows. In Masechet Berachot Rabbi Yitzchak reminded the devout not to get too lost in their prayers if there are cows (or bull or oxen) in the vicinity. It turns out that they cause all kinds of injuries even today. In 2009, orthopedists from Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Ireland published a fascinating paper entitled Cow-related trauma: A 10-year review of injuries admitted to a single institution. Over a decade, the hospital admitted 47 people with cow related trauma, most of whom sustained their injuries from kicking (unlike matadors, who suffer from horn related injuries). And next time you feel like walking across a field containing some gentle-looking cows, remember this: one of the patients was admitted with a head injury, a hip fracture and hypothermia after being trampled on by his herd of cattle in a field and found a number of hours later. (There are no details as to whether the injury occurred during shacharit or mincha).

“If a bull be a goring bull and it is shown that he is a gorer, and he does not bind his horns, or fasten the bull, and the bull gores a free-born man and kills him, the owner shall pay one-half a mina in money. If he kills a man’s slave, he shall pay one-third of a mina.””

— Code of Hammurabi, Articles 251–252.

In another paper - Blunt Bovine and Equine Trauma - from La Crosse Lutheran Hospital in Wisconsin, researchers provided this illustrative case:

A 57-year-old male was pinned to the ground by a 2,000 pound dairy bull and repeatedly knocked to the ground forcefully at least seven times before he was able to crawl from the pen…Examination revealed the following injuries: bilateral flail chest, 13 rib fractures, bilateral hemopneumothoraces, renal contusion, two forearm fractures, left shoulder dislocation, bilateral scapula fractures, and dental alveolar fractures. The patient was treated by...mechanical ventilation for 15 days…His hospital course was complicated by Klebsiella pneumonia and at 16-month followup he remained severely dyspneic, unable to perform his usual farm work.

Finally, we should note a report published a few months ago in The Times (of London) about Scottish farmer Derek Roan, who was killed by one of his cows. Roan, whose family had farmed in the area for some 125 years, born on the farm had also appeared in a BBC documentary series This Farming Life.

Sheriff Joanna McDonald, who conducted a fatal accident inquiry, wrote that Mr Roan had died

… from extensive thoracic injuries as a result of an accident involving a cow whilst working on the farm. His death is certified in the post-mortem report as having been primarily the result of severe chest trauma.

Mr Roan intended to move a cow and its calf to join the main herd. The cow, a black Galloway beef cow weighing around 550kg, along with her calf, had been separated from the main herd a few days earlier due to suckling issues with the calf, who was approximately a week old at the time of the accident.

The farm vet, Dr Graham Bell, stated that it was good husbandry to deal with this issue in the way that Mr Roan had, to ensure that the calf was managing. The cow, who was aged around ten to 12 years, had never shown any signs of aggression before.

Cattle look gentle, and for the most part, they are.  But they are large beasts with incredible strength. Hikers, (and farmers) beware. Please pray safely.

Rosh Hashanah 26a~ How Does a Cow Grow Her Horn?

Among the several reasons given by the Talmud for not using the horn of a cow as a shofar, there is this one, stated by the great sage Abayye.

ראש השנה כו, א

שׁוֹפָר אָמַר רַחֲמָנָא, וְלֹא שְׁנַיִם וּשְׁלֹשָׁה שׁוֹפָרוֹת. וְהָא דְּפָרָה, כֵּיוָן דְּקָאֵי גִּילְדֵי גִּילְדֵי — מִיתְחֲזֵי כִּשְׁנַיִם וּשְׁלֹשָׁה שׁוֹפָרוֹת

This is the reasoning of the Rabbis: The Merciful One says to sound a single shofar, and not two or three shofarot together, but this horn of a cow, since it is comprised of layers, looks like two or three shofarot.

Rashi adds explains this passage like this:

גילדי גילדי - בכל שנה ושנה ניכרת תוספתו והוא כמין גלד מוסיף על גלד ראשון בתכליתו של ראשון תחילת השני

It grows in layers: The new growth can be seen every year. It is an additional layer over the first layer with each year adding another.

Stages in horn development in cattle(Bos taurus). (A)In the newborn calf there is no tangible protrusion on the skull, but the site of the future horn site is covered by a pair of hairy spots. Beneath the epidermis, mesenchymal structures and sebaceous glands accumulate. Elevation of the underlying frontal bone begins. (B, C) In the juvenile between 2 and 6 months of age a protrusion is visible and the primitive core develops under the epidermis and above the frontal bone. Keratinization has already begun on the epidermis. The core undergoes ossification and then is fused to the underlying protruding (dome-shaped) frontal bone. (D) From 6 months of age to adulthood, the frontal sinus enters the base of the core and pneumatization proceeds until 3 or 4 years of age. Keratinization continues incrementally on the epidermis. *It is not clear at what stage the periosteum is formed around the core bone. In the adult the core bone is overlaid by the periosteum. From Nasoori A. Formation, structure, and function of extra-skeletal bones in mammals. Biol. Rev. (2020).

A helpful paper from the School of Veterinary Medicine in Hokkaido, Japan published last year reviewed the formation, structure, and function of bony compartments like horns (and other bits too) in mammals. It tells you everything you need to know about how reindeer grow their antlers, giraffe their ossicones, and rhinoceri their incredible horns. It also details how cows grow their horns, so it seems the right place to look for help in understanding today’s page of Talmud.

In cattle, the horns begin early in gestation as primitive horn buds, but there is no ossification (the process by which something becomes bone) until after the calf is born. Then, a pair of primitive cores develop above the frontal area (see the figure above, B). These connective-tissue-like cores will later form the bony core of the horn. But these primitive cores have no adhesion to the underlying frontal bone until they fuse with it at around two months of age (C). Subsequently, the core begins to grow upwards and ossifies, and there are changes in the layer of skin over it, called the epidermis. which becomes keratinized to generate a hard surface. The middle of the growing horn has a hollow base much like the sinuses we have on our faces, so that, other than at its tip, the horn has a spongy hollow, structure (D). “Keratinization of the epidermis” this paper notes, “continues throughout the animal’s life and, depending on the species, the horns can take various lengths, sizes, and shapes.” There was some dispute as to whether a cow’s horn grows from the base of from the tip. But in their 1983 review paper The Interrelationships of Higher Ruminant Families with Special Emphasis on the Members of the Cervoidea, Janis and Scott conclude that “in fact, neither the core nor the sheath grow from the base.The bony core grows both from the tip and by appositional growth over the surface and the sheath is continually produced over the entire surface of the core.”

We can conclude therefore that the horn of a cow does indeed grow continually, although not annually, like the rings of a tree. Abayye, who died in 337, knew cows. But there is one problem with his explanation. Sheep belong to the same family as cows. It is called the Bovidae and includes cattle, sheep, and antelope, as you can see below in the diagram from a group of Israeli researchers. And sheep grow their horns just like cattle, which means that they also grow them “גִּילְדֵי גִּילְדֵי" or in layers. Which would make them just as forbidden as cow’s horns. Just don’t tell that to the person who blows shofar.

From Dekelet al. Dispersal of an ancient retroposon in the TP53promoter of Bovidae: phylogeny, novel mechanisms, and potential implications for cow milk persistency. BMC Genomics (2015) 16:53.

Berachot 33a ~ Injuries from Cows

Under what circumstances of threatened physical danger may a person interrupt her prayers? Getting too close to snakes is not a good idea, but cows are a problem too.

ברכות לג, א

אָמַר רַבִּי יִצְחָק: רָאָה שְׁווֹרִים — פּוֹסֵק. דְּתָנֵי רַב הוֹשַׁעְיָה: מַרְחִיקִין מִשּׁוֹר תָּם — חֲמִשִּׁים אַמָּה, וּמִשּׁוֹר מוּעָד — כִּמְלוֹא עֵינָיו 

Rabbi Yitzchak said: One who saw oxen coming toward him, he interrupts his prayer, as Rav Hoshaya taught: One distances himself fifty cubits from an innocuous ox [shor tam], an ox with no history of causing damage with the intent to injure, and from a forewarned ox [shor muad], an ox whose owner was forewarned because his ox has gored three times already, one distances himself until it is beyond eyeshot.

So today we will discuss injuries from oxen and cows. But first, just what is an ox?

Just what is an ox?

The Hebrew word used in the Talmud is shor - (שור, rhymes with shore). Consider the following verse from Leviticus 22:27:

שור או כשב או עז כי יולד והיה שבעת ימים תחת אמו 

Here are some of the ways it is translated into English:

• When a bull or a goat is born, it shall be seven days under its mother... (Robert Alter. The Five Books of Moses. [Alter seems to have forgotten to translate the word כשב]).

• When an ox or a sheep or a goat is born, it shall be seven days under its mother...(S.R. Hirsch. The Pentateuch, translated into English by Isaac Levy.)

• When any of the herd, or a sheep, or a goat is brought forth, then it shall be seven days under its dam..(The Pentateuch, translated into English by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silberman.)

• When an ox or a sheep or a goat is born, it shall stay seven days with its mother...(The JPS Torah Commentary, ed. N. Sarna.)

• When a bullock or a sheep or a goat is brought forth, then it shall be seven days under its dam...(Koren Jerusalem Bible.)

• When a calf, a lamb or a goat is born, it is to remain with its mother for seven days...(New International Version.)

• When a bullock, or a sheep, or a goat, is brought forth, then it shall be seven days under the dam...(King James Bible)

There are more, but you get the point. The word shor (שור) has been translated as a bull, an ox, a calf, a bullock and as a collective, any of the herd.  The Koren Talmud and the Soncino Talmud translate it as ox.  The ArtScroll Schottenstein Talmud as a bull. Confused? Me too.

Here are some of The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary definitions of an ox:

1. The domestic bovine quadruped (sexually dist. as bull and cow); in common use, applied to the male castrated and used for draught purposes, or reared to serve as food.

2. Zool. Any beast of the bovine family of ruminants, including the domestic European species, the 'wild oxen' preserved in certain parks in Britain, the buffalo, bison, gaur, yak, musk-ox, etc.

In his late nineteenth century translation of the Jerusalem Talmud into French, Moise Schwab translated the word shor as "le bouef" (rather than "le teureau"). De Sola's English translation of the Mishnah, published in 1843, uses the word ox. So does the 1878 compendium by Joseph Barclay, and the first complete English translation of the Talmud, by Michael Rodkinson, published between 1896 and 1903.  The translation of shor as ox is goes back to these early translations, but the suggestion that the meaning of the word is a 'castrated male bovine quadraped' is certainly wrong. Jews are forbidden to castrate their animals, and a castrated bull would have been ineligible to use as a sacrifice. And so we must conclude that the best translation of the word shor (שור) is a bull (well done, ArtScroll!).  

The delightfully named lecturer Dr. Goodfriend from California State University recently published a lengthy paper (in this book) on the various terms for cattle in the Bible, and the question of whether a castrated bull (a gelding) could have been offered as a sacrifice in the Temple.  The good professor Goodfriend concludes that indeed the prohibition against the castration of animals "would have placed the Israelite farmer at a disadvantage as fewer suitable animals would have been available for his use." One possible way to overcome come this (other than to use cows for ploughing) would have been to import castrated bulls from those who lived outside of Israel.  

And having sorted that out, let’s turn to the fun topic of the day. Injuries from cows.

“Cow-related trauma is a common among farming communities and is a potentially serious mechanism of injury that appears to be under-reported in a hospital context. Bovine-related head-butt and trampling injuries should be considered akin to high-velocity trauma.”

— Murphy, CG. McGuire, CM. O’Malley, N. Harrington P. Cow-related trauma: A 10-year review of injuries admitted to a single institution. Injury 2010. 41: 548–550.

Injuries from Domestic bulls (and Cows too)

Mechanisms of injury from cows. From Murphy, CG. McGuire, CM. O’Malley, N. Harrington P. Cow-related trauma: A 10-year review of injuries admitted to a single institution. Injury 2010. 41: 548–550.

Much of the fourth chapter of the Talmud in Bava Kamma addresses injuries from domestic bulls and cows. In today’s page of Talmud Rabbi Yitzchak reminded the devout not to get too lost in their prayers if there are cows (or bull or oxen) in the vicinity. It turns out that they cause all kinds of injuries even today. In 2009, orthopedists from Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Ireland published a fascinating paper entitled Cow-related trauma: A 10-year review of injuries admitted to a single institution. Over a decade, the hospital admitted 47 people with cow related trauma, most of whom sustained their injuries from kicking (unlike matadors, who suffer from horn related injuries). And next time you feel like walking across a field containing some gentle-looking cows, remember this: one of the patients was admitted with a head injury, a hip fracture and hypothermia after being trampled on by his herd of cattle in a field and found a number of hours later. (There are no details as to whether the injury occurred during shacharit or mincha).

“If a bull be a goring bull and it is shown that he is a gorer, and he does not bind his horns, or fasten the bull, and the bull gores a free-born man and kills him, the owner shall pay one-half a mina in money. If he kills a man’s slave, he shall pay one-third of a mina.””

— Code of Hammurabi, Articles 251–252.

In another paper - Blunt Bovine and Equine Trauma - from La Crosse Lutheran Hospital in Wisconsin, researchers provided this illustrative case:

A 57-year-old male was pinned to the ground by a 2,000 pound dairy bull and repeatedly knocked to the ground forcefully at least seven times before he was able to crawl from the pen…Examination revealed the following injuries: bilateral flail chest, 13 rib fractures, bilateral hemopneumothoraces, renal contusion, two forearm fractures, left shoulder dislocation, bilateral scapula fractures, and dental alveolar fractures. The patient was treated by...mechanical ventilation for 15 days…His hospital course was complicated by Klebsiella pneumonia and at 16-month followup he remained severely dyspneic, unable to perform his usual farm work.

Cattle look gentle, and for the most part, they are.  But they are large beasts with incredible strength. Hikers, (and farmers) beware. Please pray safely.

[Partial repost from here.]

Bava Kamma 46a ~ Injuries from Cows

בבא קמא מו, א

שור שנגח את הפרה ונמצא עוברה בצדה ואין ידוע אם עד שלא נגחה ילדה אם משנגחה ילדה משלם חצי נזק לפרה ורביע נזק לולד וכן פרה שנגחה את השור ונמצא ולדה בצדה ואין ידוע אם עד שלא נגחה ילדה אם משנגחה ילדה משתלם חצי נזק מן הפרה ורביע נזק מן הולד

If a bull gored a cow and its newly-born calf is found dead nearby, and it is not known whether the birth of the calf preceded or followed the goring, half damages are paid for the injuries inflicted upon the cow but only quarter damages are paid for the loss of the calf. If a cow gored a bull and a live calf was found nearby, so that it was unknown whether the birth of the calf preceded or followed the goring, half damages can be recovered out of the value of cow ,and quarter damages out of the  value of her calf. (Bava Kamma 46a.)

BullS vs people: the score so far

The Spanish Matador Victor Barrio was gored to death by a bull in Teruel, Spain last Shabbat. He was buried on Monday.

It's been a tough week for bullfighters. Last week, during the annual festival of running with the bulls in Pamplona, eleven men (including three Americans) were gored.  Meanwhile in the Italian village of Pedreguer near Valencia, a 28-year-old man died after a bull’s horn pierced his lung and heart during a run with the bulls there. Finally, last Shabbat, on the very day that we learned a page of Talmud about bullfighting, Victor Barrio, a 29-year-old professional matador, was killed when a bull’s horn pierced his chest as he competed in a fight in the town of Teruel in the eastern region of Aragon. He was the first matador to die in a bullfight since 1992. As we learned last week, Lorenzo, the 1,000 pound bull would not have been held liable in Jewish law, but this fact didn't help the him. Or his mother.   The killer bull and his mother were slaughtered for meat, because in Spanish tradition, the mother of any bull that kills a human is also destined to be slaughtered, in order to “kill off the bloodline”.  This news seems to make more relevant the talmudic discussions of the liabilities if an ox gores a person. But wait a minute. The opening chapters of Bava Kamma, the tractate currently being studied in the Daf Yomi cycle, focuses heavily on the legal liabilities of an ox that gores. But these were bulls. Is there any difference?

Just what is an ox?

The Hebrew word used in the Talmud is shor - (שור, rhymes with shore). Consider the following verse from Leviticus 22:27:

שור או כשב או עז כי יולד והיה שבעת ימים תחת אמו 

Here are some of the ways it is translated into English:

• When a bull or a goat is born, it shall be seven days under its mother... (Robert Alter. The Five Books of Moses. [Alter seems to have forgotten to translate the word כשב]).

• When an ox or a sheep or a goat is born, it shall be seven days under its mother...(S.R. Hirsch. The Pentateuch, translated into English by Isaac Levy.)

• When any of the herd, or a sheep, or a goat is brought forth, then it shall be seven days under its dam..(The Pentateuch, translated into English by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silberman.)

• When an ox or a sheep or a goat is born, it shall stay seven days with its mother...(The JPS Torah Commentary, ed. N. Sarna.)

• When a bullock or a sheep or a goat is brought forth, then it shall be seven days under its dam...(Koren Jerusalem Bible.)

• When a calf, a lamb or a goat is born, it is to remain with its mother for seven days...(New International Version.)

• When a bullock, or a sheep, or a goat, is brought forth, then it shall be seven days under the dam...(King James Bible)

There are more, but you get the point. The word shor (שור) has been translated as a bull, an ox, a calf, a bullock and as a collective, any of the herd.  The Koren Talmud, The ArtScroll Schottenstein Talmud and the Soncino Talmud all translate it as ox.  Confused? Me too.

Here are some of  The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary definitions of an ox:

1. The domestic bovine quadruped (sexually dist. as bull and cow); in common use, applied to the male castrated and used for draught purposes, or reared to serve as food.

2. Zool. Any beast of the bovine family of ruminants, including the domestic European species, the 'wild oxen' preserved in certain parks in Britain, the buffalo, bison, gaur, yak, musk-ox, etc.

In his late nineteenth century translation of the Jerusalem Talmud into French, Moise Schwab translated the word shor as "le bouef" (rather than "le teureau"). De Sola's English translation of the Mishnah, published in 1843, uses the word ox. So does the 1878 compendium by Joseph Barclay, and the first complete English translation of the Talmud, by Michael Rodkinson, published between 1896 and 1903.  The translation of shor as ox is goes back to these early translations, but the suggestion that the meaning of the word is a 'castrated male bovine quadraped' is certainly wrong. Jews are forbidden to castrate their animals, and a castrated bull would have been ineligible to use as a sacrifice. And so we must conclude that the best translation of the word shor (שור) is a bull. 

The delightfully named lecturer Dr. Goodfriend from California State University recently published a lengthy paper (in this book) on the various terms for cattle in the Bible, and the question of whether a castrated bull (a gelding) could have been offered as a sacrifice in the Temple.  The good professor Goodfriend concludes that indeed the prohibition against the castration of animals "would have placed the Israelite farmer at a disadvantage as fewer suitable animals would have been available for his use." One possible way to overcome come this (other than to use cows for ploughing) would have been to import castrated bulls from those who lived outside of Israel.  

“Cow-related trauma is a common among farming communities and is a potentially serious mechanism of injury that appears to be under-reported in a hospital context. Bovine-related head-butt and trampling injuries should be considered akin to high-velocity trauma.”

— Murphy, CG. McGuire, CM. O’Malley, N. Harrington P. Cow-related trauma: A 10-year review of injuries admitted to a single institution. Injury 2010. 41: 548–550.

Injuries from Domestic bulls (and Cows too)

Mechanisms of injury from cows. From Murphy, CG. McGuire, CM. O’Malley, N. Harrington P. Cow-related trauma: A 10-year review of injuries admitted to a single institution. Injury 2010. 41: 548–550.

Injures from bullfighting are hardly surprising, and the Talmud in Bava Kamma does not focus its attention on them. Rather, it addresses injuries from domestic bulls and cows outside of the bull fighting arena. This is made clear in the Mishnah we will learn in the Daf Yomi cycle tomorrow, which discusses injuries caused by a cow. It turns out that these kind of injuries remain common even today. In 2009, orthopedists from Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Ireland published a fascinating paper entitled Cow-related trauma: A 10-year review of injuries admitted to a single institution. Over a decade, the hospital admitted 47 people with cow related trauma, most of whom sustained their injuries from kicking (unlike matadors, who suffer from horn related injuries). And next time you feel like walking across a field containing some gentle-looking cows, remember this: one of the patients was admitted with a head injury, a hip fracture and hypothermia after being trampled on by his herd of cattle in a field and found a number of hours later.

“If a bull be a goring bull and it is shown that he is a gorer, and he does not bind his horns, or fasten the bull, and the bull gores a free-born man and kills him, the owner shall pay one-half a mina in money. If he kills a man’s slave, he shall pay one-third of a mina.””

— Code of Hammurabi, Articles 251–252.

In another paper - Blunt Bovine and Equine Trauma - from La Crosse Lutheran Hospital in Wisconsin, researchers provided this illustrative case:

A 57-year-old male was pinned to the ground by a 2,000 pound dairy bull and repeatedly knocked to the ground forcefully at least seven times before he was able to crawl from the pen…Examination revealed the following injuries: bilateral flail chest, 13 rib fractures, bilateral hemopneumothoraces, renal contusion, two forearm fractures, left shoulder dislocation, bilateral scapula fractures, and dental alveolar fractures. The patient was treated by...mechanical ventilation for 15 days…His hospital course was complicated by Klebsiella pneumonia and at 16-month followup he remained severely dyspneic, unable to perform his usual farm work.

Cattle look gentle, and for the most part, they are.  But they are large beasts with incredible strength. Hikers (and farmers) beware.

John Singer Sargent. Shoeing The Ox, 1910. Oil on board. From the collection of the Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen, Scotland.