Mack Tamar Salmon, Shaham Dorith, Marcus Esther-Lee
Adam U'Refua Track, The Hadassah-Hebrew University, Faculty of Medicine, Jerusalem, Israel.
Med Law. 2013 Sep;32(3):287-303.
Real-life ethical issues that concern those engaged in medical practice existed and were discussed in earlier ages. It seems that many of the same dilemmas that we face today occupied our ancestors as well. An investigation of historical sources may be useful in showing earlier methods of coping with the dilemmas relating to health and illness. In this article we will present several such topics taken from the sources of Jewish society in pre-modern Europe. These sources served as the basis for a course given to medical students as part of the Medical Humanities track. The "raw materials" are historical, written Hebrew and Yiddish sources from Jewish society. Genres include Minute books, the huge corpus of Responsa, historical elegies written about epidemics, memoirs, and instruction books written by Jewish physicians. Profound bio-ethical issues can be found in historical sources. Main issues discussed are: physician's fees, obligations, and rights; personal characteristics expected of physicians; physician's obligations when his/her own life is endangered; medicalization of certain human conditions; and ideological questions regarding the relationship between traditional folk medicine and modern, academic medicine. The historical distance facilitates a freer discussion about distant people, while getting in touch with our own attitudes.
涉及医疗从业者的现实伦理问题在早期就已存在并被讨论。似乎我们如今面临的许多困境也曾困扰着我们的祖先。对历史资料的研究可能有助于展现早期应对与健康和疾病相关困境的方法。在本文中，我们将呈现几个取自前现代欧洲犹太社会资料的此类主题。这些资料是作为医学人文课程的一部分提供给医学生的一门课程的基础。“原材料”是来自犹太社会的历史希伯来文和意第绪文资料。体裁包括会议记录簿、大量的问答集、关于流行病的历史挽歌、回忆录以及犹太医生撰写的指导手册。在历史资料中能发现深刻的生物伦理问题。讨论的主要问题有：医生的费用、义务和权利；对医生个人特质的期望；当医生自身生命受到威胁时的义务；某些人类状况的医学化；以及关于传统民间医学与现代学术医学关系的意识形态问题。历史的距离有助于更自由地讨论遥远的人们，同时也能让我们审视自己的态度。
