The Origins of Medical Ethics in France: The International Congress of Morale Médicale of 1955

Abstract

In 1955, the Ordre National des Médecins, the professional body responsible for regulating the French medical profession, organized what was in effect the first international congress devoted to medical ethics.¹ Although the term éthique médicale was already in circulation, organizers preferred to use the more traditional and less philosophical term morale médicale to describe the subject of the meeting. For congress organizers, this term was itself something of an abbreviation for an even wider series of issues, “professional medical regulation, medical morality and comparative medical law” (I: 7).