Bava Kamma 074

13:
We come now to the third matter for which the respondent might have to indemnify the plaintiff: his medical expenses.

14:
This item derives, of course, from the Torah [Exodus 21:18-19]:

Here again we see that the concern of the Torah is not the punishment of the wrongdoer but the indemnification of the victim.

15:
Our mishnah refers to wounds that seem to have healed but then re-open for some reason. Rambam, in his commentary on our present mishnah, says:

I can't help feeling that Rambam here is doing a favour to all his medical colleagues (Rambam was himself a physician): if the patient doesn't do exactly as he was instructed – don't blame the doctor! And, more to the point, don't blame the malfeasant.

16:
And, speaking of doctors, it is upon this same verse that the rights of the medical profession are recognised in halakhic jurisprudence. In the Torah [Exodus 15:26] God says:

It would have been so easy for the sages to do, as has been done in other philosophies, and prohibit all medical attention because God is the only licenced healer of mankind. But, instead, they relied on the verse that we have quoted above [Exodus 21:19]: 'he must see that he is healed'.

To be continued.

In BK 072 I wrote:

To us, today, the method outlined in our present mishnah seems antiquated; and it is indeed antiquated. But it did yield more or less exact assessments of the actual physical damage sustained: how much would a buyer have to pay for this man, unharmed, if he were sold in the local slave market; and how much would he be worth in that same market now that he has lost his left arm, the sight of his right eye, the use of his foot and so forth.

Naomi Graetz writes:

Actually this method is not at all antiquated – perhaps it is not used by the judicial system, but it is certainly used by insurance agencies to assess compensation to victims. I was shocked when a friend's mother who lived in a nursing home in the U.S. was injured by a malfunctioning door got virtually no insurance money since it was deemed that she was not "worth that much".

I respond:

In halakhic jurisprudence all human beings are of equal value in themselves (i.e. without taking their possessions into account). This is because all human beings are created in the Divine image. It follows that no Bet Din would be able to uphold a judgement which implies "she is not worth that much". Perhaps the woman's lawyer should have asked the insurance company how much they would be prepared to pay to avoid being painfully accosted by a malfunctioning door (as we learned in the previous shiur). Well-known is the teaching of the Talmud of Eretz-Israel [Nedarim 30b]:

Rabbi Akiva teaches the worth of every Jew [your fellow]; Ben-Azzai teaches the worth of every single human being. Perhaps even more pertinent is the teaching of this midrash: