For the first time in our tradition there was a complete separation between killing and curing. Throughout the primitive world the doctor and the sorcerer tended to be the same person. He with power to kill had power to cure, including specially the undoing of his own killing activities.
He who had power to cure would necessarily also be able to kill. With the Greeks the distinction was made clear. One profession, the followers of Asclepius, were to be dedicated completely 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. This is a priceless possession which we cannot afford to tarnish, 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. It is the duty of society to protect the physician from such requests.
Margaret Mead, on the Hippocratic Oath. Quoted in Psychiatry and Ethics (1972), Maurice Levine, M.D., George Braziller, pub., ISBN 0807606421 ISBN 9780807606421 pp. 324-325, [2] citing (notes, p. 377) a personal communication from Margaret Mead, 1961. [3] Maurice Levine (1902-1971) was "distinguished former chairman of the University of Cincinnati Department of Psychiatry." Compare: Who knows how to heal knows how to destroy (qui scit sanare scit destruere) - A woman's testimony before the Inquisition, Modena, 1499. Quoted in Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West (1999), John M. Riddle, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0674270266 ISBN 978-0674270268 (p. 118). [4]
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