[Formation of progressive bourgeois opinions on the life-sustaining task of medicine and the care of dying patients at the beginning of the 19th century in Germany].

The ethical opinions concerning the task of medicine to sustain life which form themselves as a consequence of the development of the bourgeois society including concrete opinions concerning the care of dying patients, as they were elaborated e.g. by Hufeland and Reil at the beginning of the 19th century, are described. These ethical positions may as a historical approach contribute to the solution of modern medico-ethical problems in the preservation of life and the care of dying patients in medicine.