Sanhedrin (21b) The verse continues: “And he prepared for himself chariots and riders and fifty people to run before him” (I Kings 1:5). The Gemara asks: What is the novelty of these actions, since other wealthy people do the same, even if they are not the sons of kings, with designs on the throne? Rav Yehuda says that Rav says: What was unique was that the runners all had their spleens removed and had the soles of their feet hollowed, removing the flesh of their feet, and these two procedures enhanced their speed.
Rashi
נטולי טחול וחקוקי כפות הרגלים - נטולי טחול על ידי סם שהטחול מכבידו לאדם וחקוקי כפות הרגלים אין בשר בפרסותיהם ורצים על הקוצים ועל הברקנין ואינן ניזוקין:
A Runner’s “quick” fix:
Medical splenectomies in the Torah Ayelet Bersson -
The Gemara in Sanhedrin (21B) comments on this pasuk that these specified servants of Adoniya’s had their spleens surgically removed, enabling them to run faster. Rashi further elucidates that the spleen weighs a person down; thus, its removal causes increased speed.
As unusual as the Gemara’s explanation sounds, removal of the spleen to increase speed was actually a common surgical procedure throughout ancient times. In Pliny the Elder’s The Natural History, a Roman encyclopedic work written around 77 AD, Pliny cites an idea that the extirpation of the spleen “renders runners more efficient” [1]. In the Greek culture as well, marathon runners often removed their spleens to increase their chances of winning competitions [2]. Furthermore, there exists an old French saying, “To run as one with his spleen out,” which clearly exhibits the belief that speed is accelerated with the extirpation of one’s spleen [3].
The notion that the spleen plays an inhibiting role in swiftness is not just an obsolete, archaic concept. Twentieth century German physician and scholar, Julius Preuss, followed by Fred Rosner, Yeshiva College graduate and current Assistant Dean and Professor of Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, both firmly believe the Gemara’s statement describing the spleen’s adverse effect on speed. Preuss and Rosner both understand the Gemara literally, even within a scientific lens, that Adoniya’s physicians removed the footmen’s spleens in order to increase the soldiers’ speed [1, 4].The Gemara in Sanhedrin (21B) comments on this pasuk that these specified servants of Adoniya’s had their spleens surgically removed, enabling them to run faster. Rashi further elucidates that the spleen weighs a person down; thus, its removal causes increased speed.
As unusual as the Gemara’s explanation sounds, removal of the spleen to increase speed was actually a common surgical procedure throughout ancient times. In Pliny the Elder’s The Natural History, a Roman encyclopedic work written around 77 AD, Pliny cites an idea that the extirpation of the spleen “renders runners more efficient” [1]. In the Greek culture as well, marathon runners often removed their spleens to increase their chances of winning competitions [2]. Furthermore, there exists an old French saying, “To run as one with his spleen out,” which clearly exhibits the belief that speed is accelerated with the extirpation of one’s spleen [3].
The notion that the spleen plays an inhibiting role in swiftness is not just an obsolete, archaic concept. Twentieth century German physician and scholar, Julius Preuss, followed by Fred Rosner, Yeshiva College graduate and current Assistant Dean and Professor of Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, both firmly believe the Gemara’s statement describing the spleen’s adverse effect on speed. Preuss and Rosner both understand the Gemara literally, even within a scientific lens, that Adoniya’s physicians removed the footmen’s spleens in order to increase the soldiers’ speed [1, 4].The Gemara in Sanhedrin (21B) comments on this pasuk that these specified servants of Adoniya’s had their spleens surgically removed, enabling them to run faster. Rashi further elucidates that the spleen weighs a person down; thus, its removal causes increased speed.
As unusual as the Gemara’s explanation sounds, removal of the spleen to increase speed was actually a common surgical procedure throughout ancient times. In Pliny the Elder’s The Natural History, a Roman encyclopedic work written around 77 AD, Pliny cites an idea that the extirpation of the spleen “renders runners more efficient” [1]. In the Greek culture as well, marathon runners often removed their spleens to increase their chances of winning competitions [2]. Furthermore, there exists an old French saying, “To run as one with his spleen out,” which clearly exhibits the belief that speed is accelerated with the extirpation of one’s spleen [3].
The notion that the spleen plays an inhibiting role in swiftness is not just an obsolete, archaic concept. Twentieth century German physician and scholar, Julius Preuss, followed by Fred Rosner, Yeshiva College graduate and current Assistant Dean and Professor of Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, both firmly believe the Gemara’s statement describing the spleen’s adverse effect on speed. Preuss and Rosner both understand the Gemara literally, even within a scientific lens, that Adoniya’s physicians removed the footmen’s spleens in order to increase the soldiers’ speed [1, 4].Preuss’s belief that the spleen inhibits swiftness was eventually eventually tested in 1922 by Jewish pharmacologist, David Macht. Macht, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, (and at Yeshiva College for a brief time), firmly believes in the synchronization of scientific discoveries with Torah and Talmudic ideas. Having read this Gemara, Macht decided to investigate the Talmud’s claim, and devised an experiment to research the correlation between medical splenectomies and speed. He trained fifty rats to walk across a thin rope, hypothesizing that the extirpation of the spleen would increase their speed and muscle coordination. Macht then splenectomized thirty rats, leaving twenty as his controls. As hypothesized, the average time to cross the rope decreased from 6.8 seconds to 4.6 seconds, signifying a correlation between spleen removal and advanced speed and muscle integration [3].
While Macht’s experiment attests to the ancient understanding of the spleen as an impediment to one’s speed, a major pragmatic question arises. How could a complicated surgery, that had a twenty-eight percent mortality rate even in the early twentieth century, have been performed so successfully with such a high survival rate before the discovery of antibiotics and modern surgical technology [2]?
One plausible resolution to this question is in Rambam’s twelfth century medical writings, where he states that the dangerous splenectomies were never performed in King David’s time. Instead, Rambam insists that Adoniya’s soldiers were given herbal drugs that shrunk their spleens, thereby decreasing the inhibiting weight [2].
