The Patient Heals the Herb

A teaching on the words about a healer’s duty, “and he shall surely heal,” was told in the name of Rav Boruch. The herb will cure the sick man, and the sick man will cure the herb. Rav Sholom Yosef explained that when Hashem decrees suffering for a person, the pain is commanded to begin at a set time and to end at a set time, through a particular person and a particular remedy, as the Gemara teaches in Avodah Zarah 55a. Why? For the sake of the herb. After Adam’s fall many sparks fell into lower places, and every act of eating or drinking helps return them to where they belong. A bitter, poisonous herb can find its tikkun only when it is the right cure for a particular ill person and he takes it with proper intentions. So the sick man heals the herb.