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Full-Text Articles in Medical Humanities
Professionalism Under Fire: Conflict, War And Epidemics, Michelle Mclean, Vikram Jha, John Sandars
Professionalism Under Fire: Conflict, War And Epidemics, Michelle Mclean, Vikram Jha, John Sandars
Michelle McLean
Today’s medical students (tomorrow’s doctors) will be entering a world of conflict, war and regular outbreaks of infectious diseases. Despite numerous international declarations and treaties protecting human rights, the last few decades has been fraught with reports of ‘‘lapses’’ in medical professionalism involving torture and force-feeding of detainees (e.g. captured during the War on Terror) and health care professionals refusing to treat infected patients (e.g. HIV and Ebola). This paper provides some historical background to the changing status of a physician’s duty to treat and how medical practitioners came to be involved in the inhumane treatment of detainees during the …
The Medical Response To The Black Death, Joseph A. Legan
The Medical Response To The Black Death, Joseph A. Legan
Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019
This paper discusses the medical response to the Black Death in both Europe and the Middle East. The Black Death was caused by a series of bacterial strands collectively known as Yersinia pestis. The Plague originated in the Mongolian Steppes. It was spread westward by the east-west trading system. Once it arrived in the Crimea in 1346, Italian merchants helped spread it throughout the Mediterranean. Medicine in Europe and the Middle East were centered on Galen’s theory of humors. There were many religious explanations for the Plague, but the main medical explanation was the spread of bad air, or …