[Avodah] Medicine for a Metzora

[Daniel Israel]

On Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:20:20 -0600 Michael Makovi 
<mikewinddale at gmail.com> wrote:
>I've seen some things that said that tzaarat is definitely not
>leprosy, but the various forms of tzaarat do appear similar to 
>eczema, ringworm, and other skin conditions.
>
>Could it perhaps be that a person gets a real medical condition 
>(eg., ringworm) because of his lashon hara, i.e. a person gets a 
natural
>condition as a punishment b'derech teva? Similarly, perhaps a 
>person
>might break his bone or catch a cold because he did an averah.
>
>If so, just as we can fix the bone or the cold even though it is a
>punishment, perhaps too the tzaarat?

Leaving aside the question of whether there is support in Chazal 
for the idea that tzaras manifests itself as a physical illness in 
some sense, I would say that the real question is not whether it is 
mutar to heal it, so much as whether it would be effective.

The difference between tzaras and the other examples you cite is 
that tzaras is specifically described in the Torah and a specific 
refuah given.  It would seem to me that, regardless of the physical 
characteristics, one could successfully heal tzaras by any medical 
means.

IIRC, we also have a specific halacha that one cannot cut off a 
tzaras.  I don't know if this has any implication for non-surgical 
treatments.

--
Daniel M. Israel
dmi1 at cornell.edu