Virtues, Etiquette, and Anglo-American Medical Ethics in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract

In medical ethics the place of the virtues, habits or traits of character that dispose one to act on one’s duties, is uncertain. In part this is owed to the attention given to the obligations of the physician in such matters as confidentiality, informed consent, and the care of the dying patient. Because in much of ethical theory moral principles are taken to be the primary source of obligations, it is no surprise that principle-based medical ethics has emerged to preeminence [2]. As a consequence of this focus on moral obligations and principles, moral virtues have received less attention in medical ethics. Medical etiquette, prescriptions about the particulars of professional behavior, has been all but ignored.