For the source text click/tap here: Bechorot 28
To download, click/tap here: PDF
Todos the physician testifies that Alexandria protected its monopoly on superior cattle and swine by removing the uterus of every cow and sow before export, so the breed could not be reproduced elsewhere. Because these animals went on to live long lives, the removal of the womb is shown not to be a fatal defect, and such an animal is therefore not a tereifah and is permitted.
Context: The testimony comes up in the case of Rabbi Tarfon, who ruled that a cow whose womb had been removed was a tereifah and had it fed to the dogs [1,2]. When the case came before the Sages at Yavneh, they permitted such an animal on the strength of Todos’s report. Rabbi Tarfon feared he would have to sell his donkey to compensate the owner, but Rabbi Akiva told him he was exempt, as a publicly recognized expert. The Gemara in Sanhedrin cites the episode as an error in a matter of Mishnah, since the Mishnah already lists an animal whose womb was removed among the kosher cases.
Todos the physician appears in rabbinic literature in two tannaitic scenes, transmitted in six places. In the first he reports that no cow or sow leaves Alexandria with its womb intact. In the second he leads a body of physicians who examine baskets of human bones in the synagogue at Lod. This essay assembles the dossier, sorts its textual layers, and separates what the sources say from what later readers supplied. The best witnesses call him Theodoros. He belongs to the generation of R. Tarfon and R. Akiva, between Yavneh and Lod. He never treats a patient and never issues a ruling.
We explore his role as historical and literary agent.