Liability for Malapraxis in Ancient Law

Abstract

FROM the earliest periods of time, suffering humanity has been the happy hunting-ground of ignorance and imposture. So it does not, at first sight, appear very extraordinary that from the dawn of civilisation legislators have found it necessary to safeguard the sick against ill-treatment at the hands of those who had undertaken to restore them to health and vigour. Yet if we pause and reflect, it cannot but strike us as curious that the oldest systems of law of which traces have come down to us, products as they are of an era in which human life was of no great value, should yet contain minute provisions against medical and surgical malapraxis. The explanation of this apparent incongruity will be found in the fact that the principle upon which relief was afforded has not always been the interest of the patient. Let us first turn to that country which is proverbially the cradle of human science, ancient Egypt. On the banks of the Nile the theocratic form of government was evolved to greatest perfection, and religion entered as the rule of conduct into the minutest details of social life. A subject so important as the art of healing could not well be left in the hands of the laity. The practice of the profession was restricted to a certain class of priests, called the image-bearers, who had made a thorough study of the Egyptian standard work on medicine, viz. those six out of the forty-two Sacred Books of Hermes which dealt with the body and