by Mathew Piercy


‘I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly, I will not give a woman an abortive remedy.’ The Hippocratic Oath.

These words, penned approximately four centuries before Christ, still hold immense relevance today. Their writer was Hippocrates, a philosopher and physician of Ancient Greece who is often considered to be ‘the father of medicine’. Hippocrates’ ‘Oath’ encapsulated the idea prevalent in Greek philosophy that suicide was a social evil akin to killing another human person, but for the first time placed it in a code of practice for doctors.

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