| Abstrakt: |
Once upon a time—in fact, until fairly recently—the duties of a physician were quite simple: he took care of his patients as best he could. You will recall that the Hippocratic Oath pledged him, first to keep the highest regard for his teacher in the art, and pass on his medical knowledge to selected individuals, and, second, to "use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment," while refraining from unethical practices and maintaining due secrecy. And in another Hippocratic passage (The Art) medicine is defined as the art of "doing away with the sufferings of the sick and lessening the violence of their disease."That has been the way of it through all the twenty-five centuries since Hippocrates and his Coan School began the effort to free medicine of superstition and set it on a sound scientific course, and to establish the ethical bases which have |
