ABSTRACT
A task of history is to view the past without self-consciously imposing a personal bias on events. But the person whose sole purpose is to collect data about people or events and painstakingly verify their accuracy is a chronicler, an antiquarian. The view of the Hippocratics that nature should be dominated by being lived with, was gradually succeeded around the seventeenth century when the scientific revolution began by the view that nature should be dominated by being overwhelmed. In the 1960’s a new armory of therapeutic weapons was introduced that gave the physician powerful tools to sustain life under what used to be impossible circumstances - artificial kidney machine, the heart-lung machine, to name a few. With this capability came the recognition that knowing when to use and when to withdraw such machines posed new ethical dilemmas. The modern medical ethics movement illustrates the interplay between evolving ideas and traditions within medicine and the society in which it is embedded.
