This book is the first comprehensive study of medical ethics in the Renaissance. It examines ethical issues, procedure evaluations and problem-solving techniques in the writings of European physicians and surgeons from the mid-16th to the mid-17th centuries. While much of the medical practice and literature of the Renaissance remained a continuation or reinterpretation of ancient medicine, Winfried Schleiner reveals an emerging self-conscious field of medical ethics that should be considered modern as it increasingly separates medicine from theology, body from soul. Exceptions to this trend appear in the discussions of doctors close to the Counter-Reformation on certain sexual topics, such as masturbation. Analysing the writings of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish doctors - the latter having developed the most secular medical ethics of the era - he examines the dominant and emerging philosophical ideas along with conceptions of the role of doctors and physical wellbeing. Schleiner chooses several topics for an in-depth examination of the development of ethical ideas: placebos and the wider problem of lying to patients; the treatment of hysteria; masturbation; and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases - topics that are still heavily laden with both moral and medical themes.
