{"id":185,"date":"2002-10-29T13:27:33","date_gmt":"2002-10-29T17:27:33","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=185"},"modified":"2002-10-29T13:27:33","modified_gmt":"2002-10-29T17:27:33","slug":"the-hypocritic-oath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/?p=185","title":{"rendered":"The Hypocritic Oath"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was listening to Jerry Cronin, the Right-to-Life Party gubernatorial candidate in New York, on the radio this morning, and he claimed that the Hippocratic Oath proscribes abortion. This sounded wrong to me, so I looked it up. Turns out he&#8217;s right. The injunctions of the <a href=\"http:\/\/classics.mit.edu\/Hippocrates\/hippooath.html\">original oath<\/a> are remarkable. They are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>To tithe one&#8217;s income to one&#8217;s teacher and his offspring;\n<li>To teach, for free, anyone who swears the same oath;\n<li>To help the sick and not to harm them (the oft-cited &#8220;first, do no harm&#8221; clause, although it isn&#8217;t put exactly that way);\n<li>No euthanasia;\n<li>No abortion;\n<li>No surgery;\n<li>No sex with patients;\n<li>To protect the privacy of patients and their families.<\/ul>\n<p>Leaving aside the question of whether this medical advice is actually <a href=\"http:\/\/hsc.virginia.edu\/hs-library\/historical\/antiqua\/texto.htm\">Hippocratic<\/a>, it is certainly, for the most part, <em>medical advice<\/em>. (Unsound and out-of-date medical advice in my view, but that&#8217;s another matter.) The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/nova\/doctors\/oath_modern.html\">modern version<\/a>, to which the overwhelming majority of medical students are still required to swear, is rather different. There are many but this is among the most popular.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:<\/p>\n<p>I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.<\/p>\n<p>I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.<\/p>\n<p>I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon&#8217;s knife or the chemist&#8217;s drug.<\/p>\n<p>I will not be ashamed to say &#8220;I know not,&#8221; nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient&#8217;s recovery.<\/p>\n<p>I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.<\/p>\n<p>I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person&#8217;s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.<\/p>\n<p>I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.<\/p>\n<p>I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.<\/p>\n<p>If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The tithing and teaching provisions have been reduced to an anodyne exhortation to &#8220;respect&#8221; and &#8220;gladly share&#8221; one&#8217;s scientific knowledge. The medical advice has disappeared altogether, replaced by vague social duties. What are the &#8220;special obligations&#8221; that doctors owe to the &#8220;sound of mind and body&#8221;? To what extent, exactly, is a doctor obliged to account for his patient&#8217;s &#8220;family and economic stability,&#8221; and how is this a <em>medical<\/em> matter? <\/p>\n<p>Respecting patients&#8217; privacy survives more or less intact; the rest is cuddle clauses. If you want a warm, sympathetic, understanding, humble doctor with awareness of his own frailty, be my guest. I&#8217;d prefer a cold, nasty, arrogant doctor whose knowledge if his field is current and who will back, when necessary, his best medical judgment to the hilt. You can have Charles Bovary; I&#8217;ll take Monsieur Larivire. Doctors of my acquaintance tell me that no one takes the modern oath very seriously, which is fortunate. But if it isn&#8217;t taken seriously why should it be taken at all?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was listening to Jerry Cronin, the Right-to-Life Party gubernatorial candidate in New York, on the radio this morning, and he claimed that the Hippocratic Oath proscribes abortion. This sounded wrong to me, so I looked it up. Turns out he&#8217;s right. The injunctions of the original oath are remarkable. They are: To tithe one&#8217;s <a href='https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/?p=185' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}