Overview

The Virtuous Physician: A Brief Medical History of Moral Inquiry from Hippocrates to COVID-19 traces the origin and development of practical moral inquiry as viewed through a lens of medical history. The cornerstone of the book is a translation of, and commentary on, the second century BC pseudo-Hippocratic Greek text, Precepts, a work not translated into English since 1921, which introduces the idea of the 'virtuous physician', and the 'art' of medicine. Preceptsdescribes the ideal way of being of the physician, and a pragmatic, very modern code of ethics. Through the examination of other early texts the book locates the physician as a seminal figure in ancient society, first with religious significance, and later with increasingly philosophico-intellectual meaning, the physical embodiment of the search for moral-pragmatic professional standardization. This inquiry is put to the test as applied to the existential threat and crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. The new, updated translation of Precepts makes the book interesting to classicists; and the detailed discussion of the cross-cultural influences between East and West in the Ancient World, especially of the influence of the Ancient Near East on Greek and Roman thought, to historians. It provides an outline of the history of the field for bioethicists and biomedical ethicists, and a seminal reference piece for physicians, from which to ground their own daily decision-making. It can be seen as a more valuable guide than the Hippocratic Oath, in this regard.

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9781804411766

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Reviews

'The book is solidly located at the intersection of moral philosophy, medical deontology, and the history of medicine. The scholarly contribution is characterized by a conjointly historical and theoretical approach (on questions of identity and moral of the medical profession), an approach that qualifies not only the translation and commentary of the Precepts, but the following in-deep analysis of the available knowledge on the origins, meaning, and history of the Greek word for physician (??????) as well, and finally, in the last chapter, a reflection on disease theory prompted first by Ebola, and updated now for Covid19. It is this approach that, on the one hand, gives a strong unity to the work, and on the other hand endears it once again to this journal.'- Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas 12 (2023), 23, p. 15

Author Information

Elliott B. Martin, Jr., M.D., is Director of Medical Psychiatry, Mass General Brigham at Newton-Wellesley Hospital; and Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Tufts University School of Medicine, Massachusetts, USA

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