Heydar Shadi,
Volume 5, Issue 0 (10-2005)
Abstract
The history of Medical ethics is as longer as the history of the medicine. In medical literature of all great civilizations such as Greek, Babylon, Egypt, Indian, Christian and Islamic, is full of ethical codes and oaths. Nevertheless the medical ethics as an academic filed appeared in 1960s. This article is a short review of medical ethics history in ancient, medieval and modern periods. In introduction after defining medical ethics and clarifying its relation to similar fields such as bioethics and clinical ethics we have explained the reasons of medical ethics emergence. In the next three parts "ancient period", "medieval period" and "modern period" the development of medical ethics was explained from initial societies to ancient Greek, Indian, Christian, and Islamic civilization to modern period. In the last part the recent developments of medical ethics in Iranian society has been reported.
