Isaac Lampronti - Physician

Physician

In 1738 he was elected rabbi of the Spanish synagogue in place of his former teacher, Recanati; and after the death of Mordecai Zahalon he became president of the yeshibah (1749). He began immediately the printing of his great work (see below). He had then reached the age of seventy, and for the next eight years until his death, he taught continuously, although he had to be taken to the school by his pupils on account of an ailment of his feet.

Notwithstanding his other occupations, he continued to practise medicine, visiting his patients early in the morning, because, as he said, the physician has a surer eye and can judge better of the state of his patient after the night's rest. He had a great reputation as physician, and his contemporaries generally added to his name the epithet "the famous physician."

He corresponded on medical subjects with his teacher Isaac Cantarini, and he drew upon his medical knowledge in many passages of his work.

He died deeply mourned by the community and his numerous pupils. No stone was erected on his grave, for half a year before his death the tombstones of the Jewish cemetery of Ferrara had been destroyed at the instigation of the clergy (Ferrara belonged to the Papal States), and the Jews were at the same time forbidden to place stones on the graves of their dead. More than a century later, Ferrara publicly honored the memory of Lampronti; on April 19, 1872, a stone tablet, for which Jews and Christians had contributed, was placed on the house in which he had lived; it bears the following inscription: "Abitò in questa casa Isacco Lampronti, nato nel MDCLXXIX., morto nel MDCCLVI. Medico Teologo tra i dotti celebratissimo. Onorò la patria. Riverenti alla scienza alcuni cittadini posero MDCCCLXXII."