Hippocrates

This paper examines Case 7 in our text “Is Birth Control Bad for One’s Health?”. This is quite an old case (1970), but nonetheless applicable in several ways to ethical and moral issues we face in today’s society. We will examine the original case and some of the applications to similar situations today. We also recognize that in today’s society, legal charges would likely be brought against the physician who acted in a similar manner as Dr. Browne. To summarize the case described in our…

The issue I want to talk about is whether or not medical professional especially doctors should be involved in the execution of prisoners. This paper does not evaluate whether or not lethal injection should happen but whether or not professionals should be involved. Before even writing this paper my current stance is that medical professionals should be involved. But my stance is not backed by any true fact but just a gut feeling. The importance of this issue falls within the practical issue…

Primum non nocere. First do no harm. It is the guiding principle in Western medicine that dates back to the ancient Greeks. When facing disease, medical professionals must strive “to do good or to do no harm,” as it is stated in the Hippocratic Corpus. When the line between good and harm becomes muddled in ambiguity, ethical dilemmas arise. So it goes, the case could be made for controversial procedures such as abortion and assisted suicide doing either good or harm to a human life, and the…

Extended Argument: Physician Assisted Suicide A popular topic of discussion for the last few decades is physician assisted suicide, assisted death, or death with dignity. This is the process of a terminally ill patient with less than six months to live asking their physician to provide them with a prescription so that they can control their death as well as the rest of their life. Patients in Washington, Oregon, Vermont, Montana, and California are now provided with the option to end needless…

Early civilization, primarily the Greeks and Romans, viewed madness as supernaturally inflicted, in which the cosmos and human conditions were caused from naturalistically sources. Illness, at the time, was explained in terms of the four humours: blood, choler, phlegm, and melancholy; similarly, to the four seasons. The lack of or excess of one of the four humours led to the person’s illness. Doctors based the humoral system on analogies within the natural world and interconnections between…

Hippocrates was a 90-year-old man when he died living in the timeframe of 460 BC to 377 BC. Hippocrates was born in a town from Greece called Larissa (Hippocrates Biography). Hippocrates was a Greek philosopher and physician who have been called ‘the father of medicine’. He and his followers dismissed the idea that illness was simply caused or cured by superstitions, spirits or gods. Instead, he argued for a rational approach to medical treatment based on close observation of the individual…

“I need the chest tube try now and where is my blood?” was the first thing I heard when I entered the emergency room on a late Saturday night. The patient came in coding after being shot five times by police and upon arrival the staff immediately jumped in to try and save his life. I watched mesmerized as the resident opened up his chest in order to get control of the bleeding. Even though the procedure was unsuccessful and the patient eventually expired, it was a great learning experience for…

The fine line between legalized murder and mercy killing. Physician assisted suicide is a practice where terminally ill patients with only a few months to live are given the option to die on their own term. Despite the fact that it has been legalized in a few countries it is widely controversial. Candidates for physician assisted suicide are patients over 18 years old who have been given less than six months to live. Terminally ill patients are prescribed lethal drugs with the intent to end…

One of the most widely debated ethical issues throughout the country is the right to die with the assistance of physicians. Out of the fifty states in the United States, only five states have legalized physician-assisted suicide. There are specific requirements that allow an individual to possess this right. The question still stands as to whether or not the right to die is morally right or morally wrong. Oregon, Vermont, California, and Washington are four out of the five states that have…

”Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.” While Abraham Lincoln could have been referencing helping the nation survive the Civil War, abolishing slavery or even the instance in which he helped Ms. Pomeroy cross a muddied street by walking across stones I believe the intention behind his statement speaks volumes. Medical professionals are tasked with knowing what is right for their patients and carrying out their plan of care, most often this includes diagnostic testing…