Mosessohn, Nehemiah. She'elah Be'ad HaChaim el HaMeithim [responsum concerning the permissibility of performing autopsies]

(AMERICAN JUDAICA)

Lipshitz Press

New York

(1915)

FIRST EDITION. Inscribed and signed by the Author on title-page

Goldman 617

A native of Odessa, Nehemiah Mosessohn was national chairman of Denver's Jewish Consumptives Relief Society (JCRS). This pamplet is a response to anti-autopsy agitation on the part of the recently established lobby "Yekara de-Shichva." Mosessohn believed that performing autopsies on Jewish victims of tuberculosis could save the lives of their fellow patients in the Denver Jewish Hospital and were therefore halachically sanctioned even according to the strict guidelines set up by Rabbi Ezekiel Landau (see Noda bi-Yehudah, Pt. I, Mahadura Tinyana, Yoreh De'ah, no. 210). The purpose of the pamphlet was to garner the support of the rabbinic decisors of the day. On page 3, there is a form letter which provides a blank for the name of the rabbinic addressee