'The most fascinating recent coment onthe Hippocratic Oath is one which originated with Margaret Mead, the great anthropologist. Her major insight was that the Hippocratic Oath marked one of the turning points in the history of man. She says, "For the first time in our tradition there was a complete separation between killing and curing. Through the primitive world the doctor and the sorcerer tended to be the same person. He wit the power to kill had power to cure...He who had power to cure would necessarily alos be able to kill.'"
'"With the Greeks," says Maragert Mead, "the distiniction was made clear. One profession...were to be dedicated compltetley to life under all circumstances, regardless of rank, age, or intellect--the life of a slave, the life of the Emperor, the life of a foreign man, the life of a defective child...but society always is attempting to make the physician into a killer - to kill the defective child at birth, to leave the sleeping pills beside the bed of the cancer patient...'"
Maurice levine, Psychiatry and Ethics, New York, 1972.
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