The earliest source indicating Jewish life in the region of today’s Austria, the so-called Salzburger Formelbuch (798-821), records the presence of Jewish doctors: an archbishop asked a count to send him a Jewish or Slav doctor.
Carinthian dukes consulted Jewish doctors from Italy in the 14th century (a “Pasculino medico” and “magister Bonaventura medicus, filio quondam magistri Jacobi medici) and in 1432 Duke Friedrich IV of Tyrol granted privileges to the Jewish doctor Meister Rubein, and his son Sigmund employed the Jew Seligmann as a surgeon. Finally, the personal physician of Kaiser Friedrich III (1415-1493) was Jakob Loans who was also known for his scholarly contacts with the humanist Johannes Reuchlin.
Formal medical training was nonetheless a real problem for Jews. A Viennese document of 1401 forbade Jewish doctors from practising medicine without passing an examination of the Faculty of Medicine of the university, but the medical faculties were closed to Jewish students. Medical training was often acquired by passing the knowledge and practice from father to son, or, in same cases, by studying medicine at an Italian university.