Ancient Codes of Medical Deontology

• Applicant: Dr. Giulia Ecca
• Subject Area: Greek and Latin Philology ; History of Science
• Term: from 2018 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 411684113

The project focuses on the study of medical ethics and, in particular, medical deontology in Greco-Roman antiquity. Based on a foundational textual investigation of treatises belonging to the so-called Hippocratic Corpus, the project will reconstruct essential aspects of the ethical rules that regulated the relationship between physicians and patients in antiquity. The innovative character of the project lies in its combination of an in-depth textual-philological analysis with a historical-interpretive investigation of key sources that - up to now - have been largely neglected. These sources are the Hippocratic treatises Testamentum, Praecepta, De decenti habitu and De medico, which can be interpreted as the first proper deontological codes in the history of Western medicine. Probably intended for students of medicine, they collect rules of behaviour, bedside manners and etiquette for physicians. The project will address several crucial and challenging questions that these sources continually pose to modern readers: how did these deontological codes originate? What were the cultural, social and philosophical reasons that led to their redaction? And, lastly, what were the specific criteria that led to the selection, systematisation and transmission of these ethical norms through time? I will adopt three distinct, yet complementary approaches in my investigation of the Hippocratic deontological texts: a) a text-critical approach, which will provide reliable critical editions of the two treatises that still require a rigorous philological work (De decenti habitu and De medico); b) a historical approach from a synchronic perspective, which will look at the four Hippocratic treatises on medical deontology (Testamentum, Praecepta, De decenti habitu and De medico) in dialogue with other ancient literary and epigraphic sources; c) a historical approach from a diachronic perspective, which will look at the reception of the Hippocratic deontology in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, with special attention to Latin deontological writings that predate the Medical School of Salerno and show significant similarities with the four Hippocratic treatises.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Italy
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Philip van der Eijk; Professorin Dr. Mariacarla Gadebusch Bondio
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Christian Brockmann; Professorin Dr. Amneris Roselli; Professorin Iolanda Ventura