Abstract
Surgery is a moral practice and each individual surgeon should be considered as a moral and fiduciary agent. Due to the unique features inherent to any surgical procedure, this activity should be guided by stringent ethical principles. When medicine and surgery transformed themselves into a profession, ethics grew to provide a frame within the surgeon-physician relationship. The influence of John Gregory and Thomas Percival should be considered essential in the growth and development of medical ethics. Sir William Stokes was the first one to coin the term “surgical ethics,” and the Australian surgical oncologist Miles Little provided a theoretical frame with the following five categories: rescue, proximity, ordeal, aftermath, and presence.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
https://www.britannica.com/topic/bioethics. Accessed 18 Dec 2017.
Rich WT. The word “bioethics”: the struggle over its earlier meanings. Kennedy Inst Ethics J. 1995;5:19–34.
Ferreres AR. Ethical debate: the ethics of non performing extended lymphadenectomy in patients with gastrointestinal cancer. World J Surg. 2013;37:821–8.
Jensen AR. A short history of Medical Ethics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 2000.
Plato. The Laws, book XI (translation by Bury RG). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1926. Loeb Classical Library vol 187.
Drizis TJ. Medical Ethics in a writing of Galen. Acta Med Hist Adriat. 2008;6:333–6.
Vilanova A. Opera Medica Omnia, vol I (Tractatus de Intentione Medicorum). Barcelona: University of Barcelona; 2015.
Bullough VL. The development of Medicine as a profession: the contributions of the medieval university to modern medicine. New York, NY: Hafner Publishing Company; 1966. p. 94.
French A. The medical ethics of Gabriele de Zerbi. In: Wear A, Roger K, French A, et al., editors. The medical renaissance of the sixteenth century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; 1984. p. 84.
McCullough LB, editor. John Gregory’s writings of medical Ethics and philosophy of medicine. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers; 1998.
Percival T. Medical Ethics, or a code of institutes and precepts, adapted to the professional conduct of physicians and surgeons. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; 2014.
Bard S. Discourse on the duties of a physician with some sentiments on the usefulness and necessity of a public hospital (King’s College Commencement, may 16, 1769) Published as Advice to those gentlemen who receive the first medical degree conferred by the university. New York, NY: Robertson, 1769. p. 2–3.
Hooker W. Physician and patient. London: Forgotten Books; 2015.
Stokes W. The ethics of operative surgery. Dublin: Printed for the author by John Falconer; 1894.
Jackson SH, Van Norman G. Anesthesia, anesthesiologists and modern medical ethics. In: Eger EIII, Saidman LJ, Westhorpe RN, editors. The wondrous story of anesthesia. New York, NY: Springer; 2014. p. 205–18.
Cabot RC. The meaning of right and wrong. New York, NY: Macmillan; 1933.
Tung T, Organ CH. Ethics in surgery: historical perspective. Arch Surg. 2000;135:10–3.
McCullough LB, Jones JW, Brody BA. Surgical Ethics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 1998.
Little M. The fivefold root of an ethics of surgery. Bioethics. 2002;16:183–201.
Little M. Invited commentary: is there a distinctively surgical ethics? Surgery. 2001;129:668–71.
Pellegrini CA. Presidential address: the surgeon of the future: anchoring innovation and science with moral values. Bull Am Coll Surg. 2013;98:8–14.
Jonsen AR. Watching the doctor. New Engl J Med. 1983;308:1531–5.
Bosk C. Forgive and remember: how to manage medical failure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1979.
Beauchamp TL, Childress JF. Principles of biomedical Ethics. 4th ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 1994.
Ross WD. The right and the good. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1930.
Kant I. Groundwork for the metaphysic of morals. New Haven: Yale University Press; 2002. p. 52.
Smith CM. Origin and uses of “primum non nocere”: above all, do no harm! J Clin Pharmacol. 2005;45:371–7.
Rawls J. (1999) A theory of justice (Revised Edition). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1999.
Adedeji S, Sokol DK, Palser T, et al. Ethics of surgical complications. World J Surg. 2009;33:732–7.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ferreres, A.R. (2019). Foundations and Principles of Surgical Ethics. In: Ferreres, A. (eds) Surgical Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05964-4_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05964-4_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-05963-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-05964-4
eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)