[The hippocratic oath: a blind veneration?].

It has been suggested that the Hippocratic oath is no longer relevant in the context of modern morals and current medical practice and that it continues to be administered simply out of blind adherence to tradition. Such judgments may be the result of too superficial an analysis of the oath. The substance of the oath is its ethical content, while the style is shaped by its cultural and historical roots and its literary form. This article carefully examines the Hippocratic oath in order to elucidate the ethical values it contains and consider whether or not these continue to have relevance for contemporary physicians.