Patrick Guinan, M.D. is president of the Catholic Physicians’ Guild of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. He belongs to the Department of Urology and Surgery at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Hippocrates (460-377 BC), acknowledged to be the father of medicine, trained students and taught at the Asklepieion of Kos, a healing temple. He authored many of the books subsequently known as the Hippocratic Corpus. This was a collection of about seventy early medical works compiled by Hippocrates or his disciples, the most important of which was certainly the Hippocratic Oath, written in the latter half of the fourth century BC. In this brief essay, I want to touch on the importance of Greek philosophy, particularly natural law and virtue, in the development of medicine; the place of ethics, or a sense of right and wrong, in medical practice; the value of philanthropia, meaning one's relationship to mankind and, for the physician, the love for one's patients; and the Christian ideal of compassion.
Date posted: 2009-11-01
Bioethics and principlism both play a role in guiding health-care delivery in a pluralistic society. However, traditional medical ethics, and not bioethics, best addresses the moral issues arising in the personal relationships between a treating physician and a suffering patient.
Date posted: 2008-02-14