Ethics and Utopia: public health theory and practice in the sixteenth century. An essay comparing the Henrician Medical Act of 1540 and More's 1530 Ordinances, with Thomas More's novel 'Utopia' of 1516.

Abstract

This essay places the early modern origins of the ethico-legal structure of medicine, in which eventually by exclusion or inclusion, dental activity shared, in the Humanist environment of the Italian Renaissance as it was imported into England in the first years of the sixteenth century. There were two linked stages to this, the first supported by the genius of Thomas Linacre (1460-1524), and the second by the administrative ability of Sir Thomas More (1478-1535). This paper concentrates on the evidence for the intellectual basis of More's medical legislation, and that which was made shortly after his death.