Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 歷史學系碩士班 === 93 === Purpose of this dessertation is to observe medical ethics in Ming Dynasty through relation between practitioner and patient during that period. The concept of ethics or moral is always without a base, it must be restricted to certain time and space. Due to some uncertainties in the environment of practitioners during Ming Dynasty,it had affected practitioners behaviour and contributed to the shaping of ethical thoughts. The status of practitioners during Ming period was low, governemnt did notimpose any standardized prosedure or examination on practitioners who serve majority of the people. Those were the reasons why practitioners during Ming could not build up authority and failed to gain trust from the mass.
Unguaranteed medical quality offered by practitioners of different background and standard further deteriorated the market and increase distrust. Patients would try whatever they could to survive, including changing practitioners quite often, seeking medical services on trial and error basis, seeking shamantic ways of curing disease, inccidents like son learnt medical to give parents treatment did happens as well. These behaviours and acts all contributed to the self-perception and value of practitioners. Some of them portrayed themselves by condeming others, convinced the patients that they seek the wrong practitioners, persuading them to look for another practitioner which caused patients to panic. On the other hand, some practitioner would make self-improvement, hoping oneself to save lots of lives. Generally, practitioners attitudes towards medical knowledge during Ming Dynasty were quite serious. They explored new medical theory, investigated cases, applying new techniques; all these reflected their concerns, and these efforts also help them to obtain the rights of expression in relation between practitioners and patients. Practitioners in Ming Dynasty show their responsibility to patients by insisting the quality of medicines. Since patients who were victimized by some irresposible practitioners could not claim justice via legal prosedure, most of them turn to(Shang Tian)- the Sky , for equal and justice. These types of concept was commonly found in medical text during Ming Dynasty, and its an interesting phenomenon in medical ethics during that period.
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