The internet search engine giant Google has put up an animated doodle on April 26 to thank the public health workers and researchers in the scientific community. Currently, the humanity is passing through the most challenging times and it is a testing time for the health workers due to unprecedented COVID 19 pandemic crisis.
It is being felt by the practicing doctors that due to systemic failures at many places and uncertainties, they are unable to to live up to the Hippocratic Oath they had undertaken to serve patients.
Here is some information about the Hippocratic Oath commonly used in most medical colleges in the United States.
In the US, it was in the 1960s, the Hippocratic Oath was changed as a 'more secular obligation' to be taken in the presence other people. The oath was rewritten in 1964 by Louis Lasagna,Tufts University, it was widely accepted for use today by many US medical schools, which goes as follows as per Wikipedia
"I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant: I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of over-treatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
I will not be ashamed to say "I know not", nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help."
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