Hippocrates' Oath and Asclepius' Snake: The Birth of the Medical Profession

ISBN-13: 9780190673673 Publisher: Oxford University Press Publication date: 12/01/2017 Edition description: New Edition Pages: 192 Product dimensions: 5.00(w) x 7.10(h) x 0.90(d) T. A. Cavanaugh's Hippocrates' Oath and Asclepius' Snake: The Birth of the Medical Profession articulates the Oath as establishing the medical profession's unique internal medical ethic - in its most basic and least controvertible form, this ethic mandates that physicians help and not harm the sick. Relying on Greek myth, drama, and medical experience (e.g., homeopathy), the book shows how this medical ethic arose from reflection on the most vexing medical-ethical problem — injury caused by a physician — and argues that deliberate iatrogenic harm, especially the harm of a doctor choosing to kill (physician assisted suicide, euthanasia, abortion, and involvement in capital punishment), amounts to an abandonment of medicine as an exclusively therapeutic profession. The book argues that medicine as a profession