What would Hippocrates make of today’s death-delivering doctors?
Aug 5, 2018 by Jill
By Dr David Mackereth, The Conservative Woman:
I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.’ – Hippocrates, said to be from the 4th or 5th century BC
Sometime around April 1986 I was, as a medical student, in a lecture theatre in a South Manchester teaching hospital. My head was face down on the desk and I was crying. The lecture being given was showing us how ultra-high-tech equipment was being used to save ever younger premature babies. That was reason enough to cry, but that was not why I was doing so. The reason was because in the previous lecture, a similarly qualified doctor from the same team had showed us how up-to-date medicine was being used to kill children some of whom were of similar age to those who were now, in this second lecture, being fought for so hard. Some were loved and saved. Others were discarded like so much trash. There was no difference between them.
What really struck me was that there was almost no connection felt between the two lectures on the part of my 250 or so fellow students. The clinical class took all this killing on board.
I became a Christian in my first year as a medical student. This was at St Andrews University. Before that, you would have had no difficulty persuading me that abortion is the ending of a human life, but I was in favour of it because no one could tell me the value of a human being. Once I became a Christian, I saw for the first time the true value of every person, that is, all human beings as creatures made for the glory of God and in his image. You may not agree with that, but that is what radically changed my mind.