Other People's Lives: Reflections on Medicine, Ethics, and Euthanasia

Fenigsen, Richard Md, PhD, Issues in Law & Medicine

Part One: In Defense of Medicine

Chapter III. The Attack on Medicine

The doctor, looking grave and solemn, began his examination. He took the patient's pulse rate and body temperature, and proceeded to the percussion and auscultation. With a certainty that left no room for doubt, Ivan Ilyich knew that all this was rubbish and fraud.26

Ivan Illich.27 The hero of this story is the near namesake of Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich, professor Ivan Illich of Cuernavaca, Mexico. Illich, the Vienna-born quadruple graduate of European universities, and one time parish priest ministering to Manhattan's poor, has become the theorist and ardent advocate of rebellion against Western …

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Article title: Other People's Lives: Reflections on Medicine, Ethics, and Euthanasia. Contributors: Fenigsen, Richard Md, PhD - Author. Journal title: Issues in Law & Medicine. Volume: 24. Issue: 2 Publication date: Fall 2008. Page number: 149+. © 1999 National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent & Disabled, Inc. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.