The book we are handing over to the readers is a kind of continuation of the Gdańsk tradition of ethical reflection, combining selected historical threads of ethics in medicine with its contemporary issues. It is a collection of papers delivered at a conference organised by the Department of Ethics and the Department of History and Philosophy of Medical Sciences of the Medical University of Gdańsk entitled "Ethics in Medicine - Yesterday and Today - on the 20th Anniversary of the Death of Professor Tadeusz Kielanowski".
The first part of the book includes studies on medical ethics from ancient times, dating back to Hippocrates, the early Christian roots of medical ethics and later periods of ethical reflection represented by great medical humanists such as Władysław Biegański and Tadeusz Kielanowski.
The remainder of the monograph includes studies on current ethical problems in medical practice, such as medicine's departure from humanistic ideas and from the human being, who, after all, should be at the centre of its work. Bioethics, its methodological status and selected problems related to it are the issues included in the third part. The burning ethical problems of contemporary medicine and health care resulting from economic conditions are not omitted. In addition to the individual papers, readers will find an abridged panel discussion between prominent representatives of medicine and bioethics.
The book is characterised by the diversity of its themes and the combination of the historical aspects of ethics in medicine with its practical problems. I am convinced, citing Cicero and his assessment of the importance of history, of the necessity of going to the sources, because it is then that we enrich our knowledge, learn from the experiences of the past and, on the basis of them, build new ones adapted to the reality around us.