Hope and Medicine

In 1803 63-year-old Scottish physician Thomas Percival published the first important modern work in medical ethics: Medical Ethics or a Code of Institutes and Precepts Adapted to the Professional Conduct of Physicians and Surgeons. The long part of the title was a commonplace of the time. It offered what amounted to a short abstract of the book. For over a century Percival’s Medical Ethics was the dominant work of its kind in the English-speaking world. The first code of ethics of the newly formed American Medical Association, in 1849, was mostly taken word for word from Percival. While not as “word for word” from Percival, the first revision of the AMA code, in 1903, was almost wholly based on Percival’s work.