Background
He was born at Metz in 1652. His father was the Polish physician Moses Kohn of Narol, in the district of Bielsk, who moved to Metz in 1648 to escape persecution during the Chmielnicki Uprising.
He was born at Metz in 1652. His father was the Polish physician Moses Kohn of Narol, in the district of Bielsk, who moved to Metz in 1648 to escape persecution during the Chmielnicki Uprising.
Cohn"s grandfather was the physician Eleazar Kohn, who emigrated from the Holy Land to Poland, and settled in Kamenetz-Podolsk, where he practised medicine until his death. He received his education at Krakow and the universities of Frankfort-on-the-Oder (at the expense of the great elector of Brandenburg) and Padua, graduating from the latter as doctor of medicine. He practised for some time in Poland, and removed later to Adrianople, where he became physician to five successive Ottoman sultans— Mehmed IV, Suleiman II, Ahmed II, Mustafa II, and Ahmed III, moving with the court to Constantinople.
In 1724 he went to Jerusalem, where he lived until his death in 1729.
The most important is the third part, which contains an illustration showing a human body and a house side by side and comparing the members of the former to the parts of the latter (see illustration).