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4. If the quality of care in Hospital B is greater, certainly the hus- of the transfer not cause the old man’s death, as explained by the phy-
band did not act according to halacha. The physicians should
probably call the police to prevent the husband from transfer-
ring his wife against her will.
5. If the husband transferred her by force, it is possible that the
physicians can sue him for ten gold pieces, as one who grabbed
a mitzvah from someone else.
6. If it is known that Hospital A gives superior medical care to
Hospital B, then the husband acted properly and it is a mitzvah
for the physicians to assist him.
176 1 Medical-HalacHic Responsa of Rav ZilbeRstein
sicians above.
The Rosh writes in Baba Kamma, (Ch. 8 #1): The person who
harmed another has to hire a physician to treat the damaged party.
If he offers to heal the damaged person himself, the patient has the
right to refuse, even if the man who harmed him he is a superior phy-
sician, because a patient has to “have peace of mind” with his treating
physician. It also says (Nedarim 41b) that a physician who swore that
his patient may not benefit from him can nevertheless treat and heal
him. The Ran explains (s.v. ela) that this would apply even if another
physician is available because “a person does not merit to be healed by
just any physician.” (Talmud Yerushalmi, Nedarim 4:2).
In light of the above, if the patient is opposed to being transferred
to a nursing home one must be consider the possibility that the treat-
ment offered there will be unsuccessful. As a result, he may die before
his time, and transferring him there is like spilling his blood.
I suggested this to my father-in-law, Rav Y. S. Elyashiv zt”l, and he
answered, as follows:
One has to do everything possible to ensure that the patient does
not die. Therefore, one should take the the advice of Dr. D. Dromer
to hire a private caretaker for the patient, wherever he is, so that he
will live. But, if there is no solution, and if they leave him where he is,
the other patients will truly suffer, then the patient in need of nurs-
ing-care is stealing by remaining where he is. The public donations
were made under the jurisdiction of those managing the institution,
and they intended it to be an old-age home, and not an institution
for patient’s requiring full nursing care. If that is the case, with all the
pain involved, one should transfer him to another institution.
Even if it seems that the patient will live longer if he remains in the
old-age home, his transfer would not be viewed as “spilling his blood,”
since we are not doing any action that may harm him and shorten his
life. This is different from the case of the girl with tuberculosis, whose
removal from the orphanage building to the cold street would actively
cause her death. In this case, we are transferring the elderly patient
Transfer of a Patient 2 149
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