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Paul Carrick. Medical Ethics in the Ancient World. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2001. xxii + 266 pp. 111. $60.00, 44.50 (cloth, 0-87840-848-7); $27.50, 19.75 (paperbound, 0-87840-849-5).
In this stimulating volume, philosopher Paul Carrick traces key issues in modern medical ethics back to ancient Greece and Rome, exploring the historical context for Greek medicine in general and the Hippocratic oath in particular. At first blush, even a classical scholar might think that a book on medical ethics in antiquity must be slender indeed, restricted perhaps to the oath and to scattered injunctions, mostly on medical etiquette, found in the Hippocratic and later medical treatises. But Carrick adroitly develops his subject by considering the place of early physicians in society; the scientific, philosophical, and religious milieus in which they worked; and a broad range of ancient attitudes toward abortion and voluntary euthanasia.
Carrick starts with the social and scientific setting of...