1. CHRIST the DIVINE PHYSICIAN

2. OPPOSITION to INFANTICIDE and ABORTION:

2.3_The_Hippocratic_Oath

BLESSED be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever and ever; I lie not.

I will bring no stain upon the learning of the medical art

NEITHER will I give poison to anybody though asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a plan. Similarly I will not give treatment to women to cause abortion, treatment neither from above nor from below.

But I will teach this art, to those who require to learn it, without grudging and without an indenture. I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment. And in purity and in holiness I will guard my art’.

Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will do so to help the sick, keeping myself free from all wrongdoing, intentional or unintentional, tending to death or to injury, and from fornication with bond or free, man or woman.

WHATSOEVER in the course of practice I see or hear (or outside my practice in social intercourse) that ought not to he published abroad, I will not divulge, but consider such things to be holy secrets.

NOW if I keep this oath and break it not, may God be my helper in my life and arts and may I be honoured among all men for all time. If I keep faith, well; but if I forswear myself may the opposite befall me.

Compare: 2017 “Declaration of Geneva” of the World Medical Association
Note new passage on autonomy = 3rd paragraph

AS A MEMBER OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION:

I SOLEMNLY PLEDGE to dedicate my life to the service of humanity;

THE HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF MY PATIENT will be my first consideration;

I WILL RESPECT the autonomy and dignity of my patient;

I WILL MAINTAIN the utmost respect for human life;

I WILL NOT PERMIT considerations of age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, social standing, or any other factor to intervene between my duty and my patient;

I WILL RESPECT the secrets that are confided in me, even after the patient has died;

I WILL PRACTISE my profession with conscience and dignity and in accordance with good medical practice;

I WILL FOSTER the honour and noble traditions of the medical profession;

I WILL GIVE to my teachers, colleagues, and students the respect and gratitude that is their due;

I WILL SHARE my medical knowledge for the benefit of the patient and the advancement of healthcare;

I WILL ATTEND TO my own health, well-being, and abilities in order to provide care of the highest standard;

I WILL NOT USE my medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties, even under threat;

I MAKE THESE PROMISES solemnly, freely, and upon my honour.

MODERN REJECTION of THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH - 2023
Promises to keep: medical graduates and their oaths
https://bioedge.org/medical-practice/promises-to-keep-medical-graduates-and-their-oaths/

Michael Cook January 17, 2023

A survey of oaths taken by medical students in the United States and Canada in 2014 and 2015 suggests that doctors are beginning their career with vague, confusing, and inconsistent notions of medical ethics.

In an article in The New Bioethics, three doctors analysed oaths from 150 of all 153 US and Canadian medical schools and compared them to oaths taken in 2000.

Most (54.7%) of them are variants of the ancient Hippocratic Oath, although a growing number (14.9%) administer only oaths which have been written by the students themselves. In 1989 no medical school administered a student-written oath.

There were some interesting changes over the last 15 years:

·  Oaths to a deity have decreased from 17.7% to 7.7%, but oaths to oneself have increased to more than 40%.

·  Commitment to observe positive law has remained unchanged (34.0% of schools) but promises to adhere to the “laws of humanity” declined steeply, from 39.7% to 16.7% of schools.

·  Pledges to abstain from sexual misconduct with patients and their family were low in 2000 and have actually declined to 2%.

·  Prohibitions of intentional killing have fallen dramatically, and are recited at only 2% of schools – although the proportion where students promise to respect the value of human life remain unchanged at 30.7%

·  Abortion prohibitions are almost non-existent at 1.3%.

·  Pledges to subject one’s conscience to the rules of governments and institutions or patient preference were included by 24.7% of schools. But an equally large proportion committed themselves to always obey one’s conscience (28.7%) and to practice according to judgement by 35.3%.

The inconsistencies and differences in the oaths point to larger divisions and uncertainties in Western culture, the authors say. “It should perhaps not be surprising that the bioethical discourse is dominated by controversial debates which essentially revolve around the question, ‘What does the physician profess to do and not do for her patient?’ It is quite clear from our study that modern oaths do not coherently or consistently answer this question.” A common moral framework for medicine is in danger of disappearing.

THE early Christian theologian and later Montanist heretic, Tertullian (160-220), lamented the terrible practice of craniotomy and embryotomy to save a mother's life in childbirth.  However he neither clearly condemns it as forbidden to Christians, nor states that it is permissible.  He only laments that it seems to be regarded as a tragic necessity.  As David Albert Jones has noted:

The first Christians followed the Jewish ethical principle that ‘we do not set aside one life for another’ (Talmud, Mishnahh Oholot 7.6). However, they faced a difficulty in accepting that ‘her life takes precedence over its life, for they saw the life of the unborn child as equally inviolable. The practical question of what to do in a situation in which a woman’s life was threatened by her pregnancy was therefore extremely problematic for Christians. It is not altogether surprising that in the first thousand years of the Church’s history, theologians preferred to pass over this difficulty in silence and to speak of abortion in circumstances where they were clear that it was sinful. It was not until the late Middle Ages that Christian theologians begin to address directly the question of abortion to save the mother’s life.

 4. CANON. PENALTIES ABORTION and CONTRACEPTION

 3. AUGUSTINE ON ENSOULMENT and SUICIDE

THE general attitude towards suicide and euthanasia in classical antiquity is complex.  On the one hand, prior to the imposition of Christianity, military suicide to avoid capture, and political suicide to avoid public execution and disgrace, are widely attested and were rarely condemned in pagan sources.  A physician who was a slave would have been expected to assist in the suicide of his master, whatever the slave's moral convictions.  On the other hand, suicide is expressly condemned in Cicero's famous Dream of Scipio (Republic, bk. 6,15), in the Jewish Talmud (Tract. Ebel Rabbathi 2), and it was technically illegal in some parts of the Roman Empire.  It was widely-know to be forbidden in the Hippocratic Oath; and medical treatises are reticent on the subject of deadly drugs at the end of life.  The legal penalties for suicide, however, in both Judaism and the Greco-Roman world seldom affected much more than burial practices and funerary privileges; and later Jewish scholars assumed that most victims of suicide were not in their right minds.

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