Ethics in Early Greek Medicine
“Ethics in Early Greek Medicine” consists of two parts. The first examines analyses of emotions, character, and ethical conduct in the Hippocratic treatises; precisely in chapter 9 of Humors and its echoes in the Epidemics; and various theories of the physiology of ethical emotions developed in the Sacred Disease, Airs Waters Places, and On Regimen. The second part examines the ethics prescribed for the physician, his entourage, and patients; precisely the ethical function of the myth of Asclepius (particularly in terms of the question of the pursuit of profit and the limitations of medicine in the face of incurable diseases), the ethics of assisting nature (in view of the problem of violent therapies), and the duties of the physician and patient (in view of the—admittedly difficult to date—Hippocratic Oath).