Patrick Guinan - Hektoen International

Has medicine lost the ethics battle?

January 30, 2017

Patrick D. Guinan This article was first published in the May 1998 issue of Linacre Quarterly Modern medicine began with the Greeks and has developed over the past 2,500 years. Medical ethics, which was also initiated by the Greeks, and summarized in the Hippocratic Oath, has guided the moral actions of the physician in […]

Is it ethical to bring religion into medicine?

January 30, 2017

Patrick Guinan Chicago, Illinois, USA Over 200 years ago Voltaire wrote that one half of metaphysics was known to everybody and that the other half will never be known. It is by no means certain that ethics has yet reached the same high degree of development. At the beginnings of recorded history, the priests […]

Can Hippocrates save modern medicine? A plea to return to our roots

January 30, 2017

Patrick Guinan Modern medicine is in the midst of a morale crisis. In this brief review I will attempt to 1.) explain why, 2.) note that medicine has abrogated control of its destiny, and 3.) suggest that a return to the Hippocratic doctor-patient relationship can save medicine. This crisis is manifested, to some extent, […]

Medical students’ attitudes toward torture

January 30, 2017

Jonathan Bean David Ng Hakan Demirtas Patrick Guinan This article was first published in TORTURE Journal, Volume 18, Number 2, 2008. Abstract Torture, whether it be domestic or war related, is a public health issue of current concern. It is the position of the American Medical Association (AMA), The World Medical Association (WMA), the […]

Thomas Linacre: Catalyst for the Renaissance

January 28, 2017

Patrick Guinan Chicago, Illinois, United States “Linacre led a life of devotion to learning, to medicine, and to the interests of humanity.” – William Osler Thomas Linacre (c. 1460–1524) Thomas Linacre, personal physician to King Henry VIII of England, was the founder and first president of the Royal College of Physicians of England. He […]

Virgil and the Aeneid

January 22, 2017

Patrick Guinan Chicago, Illinois, United States “Arma virumque canto.—I sing of arms and of a man” Virgil reading the Aeneid to Augustus and his sister Octavia, Jean Baptiste Wicar, c.1790, Art Institute of Chicago, In the painting Octavia has fainted on hearing the name of her dead son, who may have been murdered by […]