1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910780610203321

Autore

Jonsen Albert R.

Titolo

A short history of medical ethics [[electronic resource] /] / Albert R. Jonsen

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, : Oxford University press, 2000

ISBN

9780199747870

1-280-83421-8

9786610834211

0-19-974787-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (168 pages)

Disciplina

174/.2/09

Soggetti

Medical ethics - History

Bioethics - History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction : the long tradition of ethics in medicine -- Hellenic, Hellenistic, and Roman medicine : fifth century BCE to third century CE -- Medieval medicine : fifth to fourteenth centuries CE -- Medical ethics of India and China -- Renaissance and Enlightenment : fourteenth to eighteenth centuries -- British medicine : eighteenth and nineteenth centuries -- Ethics in American medicine -- American medicine : science, competence, and ethics -- A chronicle of ethical events : 1940s to 1980s -- Conclusion : from medical ethics to bioethics.

Sommario/riassunto

A physician says, "I have an ethical obligation never to cause the death of a patient," another responds, "My ethical obligation is to relieve pain even if the patient dies." The current argument over the role of physicians in assisting patients to die constantly refers to the ethical duties of the profession. References to the Hippocratic Oath are often heard. Many modern problems, from assisted suicide to accessible health care, raise questions about the traditional ethics of medicine and the medical profession. However, few know what the traditional ethics are and how they came into being. This book provides a brief tour of the complex story of medical ethics evolved over centuries in both



Western and Eastern cultures. It sets this story in the social and cultural contexts in which the work of healing was practiced and suggests that, behind the many different perceptions about the ethical duties of physicians, certain themes appear constantly, and may be relevant to modern debates. The book begins with the Hippocratic Medicine of ancient Greece, moves throught the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Enlightenment in Europe, and the long history of Indian and Chinese medicine, ending as the problems raised modern medical science and technology challenge the settled ethics of the long tradition. - Publisher.