Among the many external influences that seriously disrupted the medical practice of Jewish physicians beyond the Jewish quarter or ghetto walls were the various prohibitions issued by town councils, territorial rulers and ecclesiastical authorities. A tacit or even open acceptance of Jewish doctors was nevertheless a widespread phenomenon - not only in German lands. The vast corpus of anti-Judaic pamphlets and books testifies to the popularity of Jewish physicians in Christian communities. Famous Jew baiters, such as Johann Jacob Schudt (1664-1722), accused Jewish doctors of harming the body and soul of their Christian patients. They corroborated their reasoning with quotations from ecclesiastical texts containing injunctions against the medical practice of Jewish physicians. Another expert on Judaism, Johann Christoph Wagenseil (1633-1705), was more lenient. He stated in his work "Feurtrag vom Juden-Teutsch" (c. 1670) that in those places where there was no Christian physician present, patients were free to consult a Jewish doctor. If however a sick person had the opportunity to choose a Christian medicus, he should do so, unless he had good reasons to consult a Jewish healer, for example in the case of a greater expertise of the latter. Nonetheless, Wagenseil made it a rule that the Jewish doctor should restrict his cure to "natural remedies".
