Conspiracy of Silence

Medicine is of all the arts the most noble; but, owing to the ignorance of those who practice it, and of those who, inconsiderately, form a judgment of them, it is at present far behind all the other arts. Their mistake appears to me to arise principally from this, that in the cities there is no punishment connected with the malpractice of medicine (and with it alone) except disgrace, and that does not hurt those who are familiar with it. T HESE RATHER STRONG WORDS of criticism are those of the most distinguished physician of history-Hippocrates.' The revered Hippocratic Oath calls upon every physician to proclaim: 2 Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption. Hippocrates' concern for discipline of the medical profession by itself and by society found its cognate in the Code of Hammurabi of 1750 B. C., which provided that if a physician caused a man's death or the loss of his eye by an operation, the physician's fingers were to be cut off. If he caused the death of a slave, he was obliged to restore a slave of equal value. 3 The later Justinian Code of the Romans made a similar provision, that if a surgeon operates on one's slave, and then neglects altogether to attend to his cure, or operates unskillfully, so that the slave dies in consequence, he is liable for the highest value of that slave within the preceding year. 4 In this country our own legal history includes the very early malpractice case of Cross v. Guthrie 5 in 1794 when a jury awarded $120.00 for the wrongful death of the plaintiff's wife as a result of the de