Medical Ethics in Antiquity: Philosophical Perspectives on Abortion and Euthanasia

The idea of reviewing the ethical concerns of ancient medicine with an eye as to how they might instruct us about the extremely lively disputes of our own contemporary medicine is such a natural one that it surprises us to real­ ize how very slow we have been to pursue it in a sustained way_ Ideologues have often seized on the very name of Hippocrates to close off debate about such matters as abortion and euthanasia - as if by appeal to a well-known and sacred authority that no informed per...